/ 

N  THE  WA 

FRANK  PARKER 
5TOCKBRIDGE 


LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

GEORGE  COBB 


YANKEE    INGENUITY 
IN    THE    WAR 


ublishing  Co. 
A    YANKEE    SEAPLANE    OF   THE    TYPE    THAT    FIRST    FLEW    ACROSS    THE 

ATLANTIC;  THE  Nc-2  RISING  FROM  THE  WATER 


YANKEE  INGENUITY 
IN  THE  WAR 


By 
FRANK  PARKER  STOCKBRIDGE 


Fully  Illustrated 
From   Official   Photographs 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
New  York  and   London 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Copyright  1920.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  April,  1920 


To 

The  Memory  of  My  Father 

WINFIELD  SCOTT  STOCKBRIDGE 

to  whose  own  Yankee  ingenuity  and  enthusiasm  in 

the  pursuit  of  knowledge  of  the  natural  sciences  and 

in  their  application  1  owe  my  early  inspiration  and 

guidance    toward   the   study   and   appreciation   of 

Man's  conquest  of  the  forces  of  Nature 

I  dedicate  this  book 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  THE    MOBILIZATION    OF    SCIENCE   AND   INDUSTRY    ...  I 

II.  THE  LIBERTY  MOTOR 14 

III.  THE   CREATION   OF   THE   AIRPLANE   INDUSTRY     ....  37 

IV.  AMERICAN  MILITARY  AIRPLANES 61 

V.  AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY  AND  AIRPLANE  EQUIPMENT    .     .  79 

VI.  THE    CHEMICAL   CONQUEST    OF   THE    AIR Ill 

VII.  POTASH,  SULPHURIC  ACID,  AND  DYESTUFFS 121 

VIII.  POISON  GAS 133 

IX.  A   REVOLUTION   IN   SHIP-BUILDING 155 

X.  SOME    EXTRAORDINARY    SHIP-BUILDING    FEATS     .       .       .       .  175 

XI.  THE  "EAGLE"  BOATS 193 

XII.  SOME  YANKEE  TRICKS  IN  UNDERSEA  WARFARE    .     .     .  212 

XIII.  THE  WONDERS  OF  WAR  WIRELESS 234 

XIV.  COTTON  BALLOONS  AND  FIRE-PROOF  DIRIGIBLES  .     .     .  257 

XV.  MOTORIZING  THE  ARMY 268 

XVI.  YANKEE  WEAPONS 290 

XVII.  CAMOUFLAGE  AND  COUNTER-CAMOUFLAGE 314 

XVIII.  DOLLAR-SAVING  DISCOVERIES  AND  DEVICES 331 

XIX.  MEDICAL  AND  SURGICAL  ACHIEVEMENTS 344 

XX.  CONCLUSION 370 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


A  YANKEE  SEAPLANE  OF  THE  TYPE  THAT  FIRST  FLEW  ACROSS  THE 
ATLANTIC;  THE  NC-2  RISING  FROM  THE  WATER  .  Frontispiece 

THE  LIBERTY  MOTOR 3 

A  THREE-INCH  GUN  IN  ACTION 5 

THE  AMERICAN  THIRTY-FIVE-TON  TANK  PROPELLED  BY  A  LIB- 
ERTY MOTOR,  BALANCED  ON  THE  BRINK  OF  AN  EMBANKMENT  7 

WORKING  DRAWINGS  OF  THE  LIBERTY  MOTOR,  SHOWING  DE- 
TAILS OF  THE  INTERNAL  CONSTRUCTION  OF  THIS  WONDER- 
FUL ENGINE 15 

THE   TWELVE-CYLINDER   LIBERTY   MOTOR,    MODEL    B     .       .      .      .  17 
AN  END  VIEW  OF   THE   LIBERTY  MODEL  A,  THE  ARMY  TYPE  OF 

MOTOR 19 

STEEL  CYLINDERS  FOR  LIBERTY  MOTORS 21 

ASSEMBLING  THE  CYLINDERS  OF  LIBERTY  MOTORS 23 

MACHINING  LIBERTY-MOTOR  CYLINDERS 27 

THE  FIRST  LIBERTY  MOTOR  TURNED  OUT  AT  THE  FORD  PLANT 

BEING  ASSEMBLED  FOR  ITS  FINAL  TEST 29 

MAKING  THE  TIDE  HELP ' 39 

HOW  TO  CUT  A  LOG  WITHOUT  WASTE 41 

HOW  TO  GET  ALL  STRAIGHT-GRAIN  STOCK 4! 

INSIDE  AN  AIRPLANE  FACTORY 43 

A   SlTKA   SPRUCE   LOG 45 

HAULING  SPRUCE  LOGS  TO  THE  GOVERNMENT  AIRPLANE  SAWMILL  47 

RIVING  A  SPRUCE  LOG  FOR  AIRPLANE  STOCK 49 

THE  KILN  THAT  MADE  OUR  AIRPLANE  PROGRAM  POSSIBLE   .    .  53 

WORKERS  IN  A  NEW  ART 55 

COVERING  AN  AIRPLANE'S  WINGS 57 

PUTTING  ON  THE  "DOPE" 59 

AMERICA'S  LARGEST  OVERLAND  FLIER 63 

AMERICA'S  STANDARD  FIGHTING  AIRPLANE 65 

THE  AMERICAN  CAPRONI  NIGHT-BOMBING  'PLANE 67 

THE  FASTEST  YANKEE  MILITARY  'PLANE 73 

THE  AIRPLANE  OF  THE  "ACES" 75 


xii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

THE  "D"  TYPE  SEAPLANE 75 

AMERICA'S  FIRST  GIANT  SEAPLANE 77 

THE  FIRST  AIRPLANE  TO  CROSS  THE  ATLANTiC 77 

AIRPLANE  MAP  OF  WASHINGTON,  D.  C 81 

BIGGEST  OF  AERIAL  CAMERAS 85 

THE  AUTOMATIC  AERIAL  CAMERA 87 

HOW  AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY  AIDS  THE  MAP-MAKER  ....  89 

THE  MARLIN  AIRCRAFT  MACHINE-GUN 93 

THE  GUN  THAT  SHOOTS  BOTH  WAYS 95 

THE  LEWIS  AIRCRAFT  MACHINE-GUN 97 

THE  BROWNING  AIRCRAFT  MACHINE  RIFLE 99 

SHOOTING  WITH  PHOTO-GUN 101 

A  STRIP  OF  PHOTOGRAPH  MADE  WITH  THE  PHOTO-GUN,  SHOWING 

THE  OPERATOR  HAD  "GOT  THE  DROP"  ON  THE  OTHER  'PLANE  IOI 
HOW  AN  AIRPLANE  LOOKS  WHEN  SEEN  THROUGH  THE  SIGHTS  OF 

A  MACHINE-GUN IO3 

THE  INSTRUMENT  BOARD  OF  A  NAVY  SEAPLANE 1 09 

PAINTING  THE  LOADED  GAS-SHELLS 135 

ONE  OF  THE  POISON-GAS  PLANTS 137 

AMERICAN,  BRITISH,  FRENCH,  AND  GERMAN  GAS-MASKS  .  .  141 

CONTAINERS  OF  POISON  GAS  READY  TO  SHIP  TO  FRANCE  .  .  143 

LOADING  GAS-SHELLS  BY  AUTOMATIC  MACHINERY 145 

GENERAL  VIEW  OF  THE  EDGEWOOD  ARSENAL  NEAR  BALTIMORE 

WHERE  GAS-SHELLS  WERE  LOADED 147 

A  HORSE  GAS-MASK 149 

THE  GUN  THAT  BEAT  THE  HUN 157 

THE  SHIP  THAT  WAS  BUILT  IN  TWENTY-SEVEN  DAYS  ....  159 

THE  "TUCKAHOE"  ON  THE  TWENTY-SEVENTH  DAY  ....  161 
VIEW  OF  THE  WOODEN  SHIP  "ABERDEEN"  TAKEN  FORTY- NINE 

HOURS  AFTER  THE  KEEL  WAS  LAID,  SHOWING  STERN  IN 

PLACE 163 

THE  WOODEN  SHIP  "ABERDEEN" 165 

INSIDE  THE  HULL  OF  THE  "ABERDEEN" 166 

A  "CLOSE-UP"  OF  THE  AIR-GUN 167 

THE  PRODUCT  OF  HOG  ISLAND 169 

THE  "SAGAPONACK" 169 

A  RECORD-BREAKING  JOB  AND  THE  MEN  WHO  DID  IT       .     .     .  171 
THE  MEN  IN  THE  FOREGROUND  ARE  PLACING  THE  REINFORCE- 
MENTS, WHILE  IN  THE  BACKGROUND  THE  WOODEN  MOLD 

IS  BEING  FINISHED  FOR  A  7,5OO-TON  CONCRETE  SHIP  .  .  177 
CUTTING  A  LAKE  SHIP  IN  TWO  PREPARATORY  TO  TAKING  IT  TO 

SALT  WATER 179 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xiii 

PAGE 

FORWARD  HALF  OF  THE  "CHARLES  R.  VAN  HISE"  TURNED  ON 

ITS  SIDE  SO  THE  IO.OOO-TON  LAKE  SHIP  COULD  BE  FLOATED 
THROUGH   THE   WELLAND   CANAL l8l 

TURNING  THE  AFTER  HALF  OF  THE  "  CHARLES  R.  VAN  HISE  " 
ON  THE  SIDE  FOR  TOWING  THROUGH  THE  WELLAND  LOCKS 
FROM  LAKE  ERIE  TO  LAKE  ONTARIO 181 

BUILDING  A  CONCRETE  SHIP  is  MUCH  LIKE  BUILDING  A  CON- 
CRETE BRIDGE 183 

POURING  THE  CONCRETE  INTO  THE  MOLD  AND  AROUND  THE  RE- 
INFORCEMENTS   183 

THE  "PALO  ALTO,"  FIRST  CONCRETE  SHIP  OF  ITS  SIZE;  IT  is  OF 

7,500-DEAD- WEIGHT-TON   CAPACITY          185 

LAUNCHING  THE  "PALO  ALTO,"  A  7,soo-TON  CONCRETE  SHIP, 

AT  OAKLAND,  CALIFORNIA 187 

ONE  OF  THE  3,OOO-TON  CONCRETE  SHIPS  BUILT  AT  BRUNSWICK, 

GEORGIA,  BY  THE  EMERGENCY  FLEET  CORPORATION    .    .  187 

LAUNCHING  A  CONCRETE  SHIP 189 

WOMEN  SHIPYARD  WORKERS  LEARNING  ELECTRO  WELDING  .    .  191 

LAUNCHING  AN  EAGLE  BOAT 195 

THE  KEEL  AND  GARBOARD  STRAKES  OF  AN  EAGLE  BOAT  IN  PLACE  197 

HULL  OF  EAGLE  BOAT  ALMOST  FINISHED       199 

WHERE  THE  EAGLE  BOATS  WERE  BUILT 201 

POWER  PLANTS  OF  EAGLE  BOATS 201 

THE  ROLLING  PLATFORM  THAT  CARRIED  THE  EAGLE  BOATS  FROM 

FACTORY  TO  THE  LAUNCHING  ELEVATOR 203 

NOTHING  COULD  BE  SIMPLER  THAN  THE  METHOD  OF  BUILDING 

THE  EAGLE  BOATS 203 

PUNCHING  THE  PLATES  FOR  EAGLE  BOATS 205 

HAULING  THE  EAGLE  BOAT  OUT  OF  THE  SHIP-FACTORY  .    .    .  207 

A  SQUADRON  OF  EAGLE  BOATS  BEING  FITTED  OUT     ....  2O7 

"GOING  DOWN" 209 

ON  THE  ELEVATOR 209 

AN  EAGLE  BOAT  IN  COMMISSION 210 

THE  AMERICAN  NAVY  TYPE  OF  AUTOMATIC  DEPTH  SUBMARINE 

MINE 213 

DIAGRAM  IN  OUTLINE  WITH  EXPLANATORY  TEXT  SHOWING  HOW 
MINES  ARE  "PLANTED"  AT  DETERMINED  DEPTHS.  PLATE 
II,  INSERTED,  THE  "Y-GUN"  FOR  THROWING  DEPTH  BOMBS 

OVER  SIDE 215 

AS  THE  DEPTH  BOMB  EXPLODES 217 

THE  "BUSINESS  END"  OF  THE  SUBMARINE- DETECTOR      .     .     .  219 

LISTENING  FOR  SUBMARINES 221 


xiv  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

RAW  MATERIAL  FOR  THE  NORTH  SEA  MINE  BARRAGE     .    .    .  22Q 

THE  NAVY  WIRELESS  STATION  AT  ARLINGTON 235 

PILOT  AND  OBSERVER  IN  A  MILITARY  AIRPLANE  WITH  WIRELESS 

TELEPHONE  EQUIPMENT 237 

AIR-DRIVEN  DYNAMO  FOR  WIRELESS  TELEPHONY 241 

WIRELESS  TELEPHONE  TRANSMITTER  AND  HEAD-PIECE     .    .    .  243 

PERFECTED  FORM  OF  WIRELESS  HEAD-PIECE  FOR  AVIATORS  .    .  247 

ALL  READY  TO  LET  GO 259 

AN  ARMY  OBSERVATION  BALLOON  OF  THE  "SAUSAGE"  TYPE    .  26l 

A  NAVY  KITE  BALLOON 263 

THE  BIGGEST  YANKEE  DIRIGIBLE 265 

NAVY  DIRIGIBLE  C-i 266 

ONE  OF  THE  14-iNCH  AMERICAN  RAILWAY-MOUNTED  NAVY  GUNS 

IN  ACTION  ON  THE  WESTERN  FRONT 269 

THE  "LIBERTY"  TRUCK,  DESIGNED  BY  ARMY  ENGINEERS    .    .  270 

THE  FAMOUS  "F.  W.  D.,"  OR  FOUR- WHEEL-DRIVE  TRUCK  .     .  271 

TEN-TON  CATERPILLAR  TRUCK 271 

THE  FORD  "BABY  TANK" 273 

THE  AMERICAN-BUILT  RENAULT  TANK 273 

SEVEN-INCH  GUN  ON  RAILWAY  MOUNT 275 

TWELVE-INCH  SO-CALIBER  LONG-RANGE  GUN  ON  SLIDING  RAIL- 
WAY MOUNT 275 

CATERPILLAR  TRACTOR  DRAWING  A  6-iNCH  GUN 277 

LIGHT  CATERPILLAR  TRACTOR  FOR  HAULING  3-iNCH  GUN      .     .  277 

SQUADRON  OF  AMERICAN  RENAULT  TANKS  GOING  INTO  ACTION  279 

AMERICAN  TANK  IN  ACTION 279 

EIGHT-INCH  GUN  ON  RAILWAY  MOUNT 281 

SlXTEEN-INCH   HOWITZER   RAILWAY   MOUNT   SHOWN  IN  FIRING 

POSITION  AT  MAXIMUM  ANGLE  OF  ELEVATION 28 1 

AN  8-INCH  HOWITZER  ON  A  CATERPILLAR  MOUNT 283 

TWELVE-INCH  MORTAR  ON  RAILWAY  MOUNT 283 

A  BLACKSMITH-SHOP,  FORGE,  ANVIL,  AND  ALL,  AND  AN  ELECTRIC 
WELDING    OUTFIT    EQUIP    THIS    UNIT     OF    THE    ROLLING 

MACHINE-SHOP 285 

A  PORTABLE  SAWMILL  CONSTITUTES  ONE  UNIT  OF  THE  MACHINE- 
SHOP  ON  WHEELS 285 

ONE  OF  THE  UNITS  OF  THE  MACHINE-SHOP  ON  WHEELS;  THIS 

TRAILER  TRUCK  CARRIES  A  DRILL-PRESS  AND  A  POWER  SHAPER  286 

THE  GENERATOR   MOUNTED   ON   A  TRAILER  TRUCK 287 

NO   MACHINE-SHOP   IS   COMPLETE    WITHOUT   A   STOCK-ROOM   FOR 
MATERIALS     AND      SPARE      PARTS;  THE      MACHINE-SHOP      ON 

WHEELS   HAS  THIS   UNIT,   TOO 287 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

PAGE 

FIRING  THE  TWIN  GUN 291 

SPRINGFIELD  RIFLES 292 

LEWIS  MACHINE-GUN,  MODEL  1917 293 

THE  COLT  DOUBLE- ACTION  ^-CALIBER  REVOLVER       ....  295 

THE  COLT  ^S-CALIBER  AUTOMATIC  PISTOL 295 

SMITH    &  WESSON  DOUBLE  -  ACTION  REVOLVER,  CALIBER   .45, 

MODEL    1917 297 

HEAVY  BROWNING  MACHINE-GUN 299 

BROWNING  TANK-GUN  MOUNTED  IN  TANK 301 

THE  DAVIS  GUN  THAT  SHOOTS  BOTH  WAYS 303 

BROWNING  AUTOMATIC  RIFLE 305 

WINCHESTER  I2-GAGE  RIOT-GUN 305 

THE  LIVENS  PROJECTOR 306 

"THE  WEAPON  THAT  WON  THE  WAR1' 307 

FOUR  TYPES  OF  HAND-GRENADES 309 

THE  YANKEE  TRENCH  KNIFE 311 

A  TRIUMPH  OF  YANKEE  INGENUITY 312 

THE  MOST  IMPORTANT  YANKEE  IMPROVEMENT  ON  THE  FRENCH 

"SEVENTY-FIVE"  OR  3-iNcn  FIELD-GUN  WAS  THE  "SPLIT 

TRAIL,"  PERMITTING  ITS  ELEVATION  TO  FIRE  AT  AIRCRAFT  .  312 
CAMOUFLAGED  YANKEE  SHIPS  AT  THE  BASSENS  DOCKS, 

BORDEAUX 315 

THE  LAST  WORD  IN  MARINE  CAMOUFLAGE 316 

A  CAMOUFLAGED  SHIP 317 

SUCCESSIVE  STAGES  OF  SHIP  CAMOUFLAGING 318 

WHAT  THE  U-BOAT  CAPTAIN  SAW 319 

PAINTING  THE  CAMOUFLAGE  ON  THE  MODEL  BOAT 320 

A  GROUP  OF  CAMOUFLAGED  BOATS  READY  FOR  "SERVICE"  .  .  32! 

THE  BOAT  AS  SIGHTED  THROUGH  A  PERISCOPE 323 

THE  AIRPLANE-DETECTOR 325 

THE  PARABLOID  AS  PERFECTED  BY  AMERICAN  INGENUITY  .  .  329 

LOCOMOTIVES  IN  BOXES 333 

UNLOADING  LOCOMOTIVES  ALL  READY  TO  RUN 335 

UNLOADING  CRATED  AIRPLANES  IN  FRANCE 337 

TESTING  PACKING-BOXES 339 

A  FIVE-TON  MOTOR-TRUCK  KNOCKED  DOWN  FOR  SHIPMENT  TO 

FRANCE  IN  A  SINGLE  BOX 341 

ROENTGENOGRAPHS  OR  X-RAY  NEGATIVES  OF  INJURED  BONES  345 

IN  AN  AMERICAN  ARMY  BASE  HOSPITAL 347 

A  FIELD  OPERATING-ROOM 349 

PORTABLE  ELECTRO-MAGNET 351 

PORTABLE  FIELD  X-RAY  EQUIPMENT 353' 


xvi  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

GENERATOR  FOR  PORTABLE  X-RAY  EQUIPMENT 355 

FIRST  PAGE  OF  THE  "ALPHA"  TEST 358 

QUALIFICATION  RECORD 359 

PART  OF  THE  "BETA"  TEST 360 

PART  OF  THE  "BETA"  TEST  is  TO  TELL  WHAT  is  WRONG  WITH 

PICTURES  LIKE   THESE 361 

TEST   FOR    RADIATOR    REPAIR-MAN 362 

SHEET-METAL  WORKER  DEMONSTRATING  SKILL  ON  SIMPLE  WORK 

IN  HIS  TRADE  BY  MAKING  A  TIN  CUP 363 

A  GROUP  OF  CANDIDATES  FOR  COMMISSIONS  TAKING  THE  "ALPHA" 

TEST 365 

THE  "BlNET"  TEST  FOR  THE  MEN  OF  LOWEST  MENTAL  CALIBER  365 

AUTO-DRIVER  TEST  COURSE 366 

RUNNING  THROUGH  AN  ARTIFICIAL  SAND-PIT  AS  PART  OF  THE 

MOTORCYCLE  TEST 366 

MANY  GROWN   MEN  WERE  FOUND  WITHOUT  ENOUGH  INTEL- 
LIGENCE TO  PUT  THE  ARMS  AND  LEGS  ON  A  WOODEN  DOLL  368 

MAKING  THE  TRADE  TESTS 368 


AUTHOR'S   PREFACE 

IN  presenting  this  report  of  some  of  the  more  striking 
and  inspiring  examples  of  the  technical  achievements  of 
America  that  went  so  far  toward  the  winning  of  the  Great 
War,  the  author  wishes,  first,  to  point  out  that  the  omission 
of  any  mention  of  the  great  scientific  and  engineering  feats 
of  the  Entente  Allies,  except  incidentally,  is  due  not  to 
any  desire  to  disparage  the  magnificent  work  of  those 
European  masters  of  pure  and  applied  science  whose  ser- 
vice in  the  cause  of  humanity  was  surely  no  less  fruitful 
and  even  more  arduous  than  that  of  their  American 
confreres.  But  the  whole  scope  and  plan  of  this  book,  by 
its  nature,  excludes  from  present  consideration  all  but 
distinctly  American  enterprise  in  this  field. 

Even  within  this  comparatively  narrow  range,  there  is 
no  pretext  that  the  whole  field  has  been  covered,  or  that 
what  has  been  covered  might  not  have  been  dealt  with 
more  in  detail  and  with  greater  scientific  precision.  Event- 
ually that  will  be  done;  beyond  a  doubt  the  complete 
history  of  science  in  the  war,  yet  to  be  written,  will  reveal 
a  thousand  wonders  much  more  marvelous  than  any  that 
have  yet  been  set  down.  This  volume,  however,  has  not 
been  written  for  the  scientist  or  the  technologist,  but  for 
the  average  American,  neither  skilled  nor  interested  in 
technical  details,  but  susceptible,  the  author  believes,  to 
the  thrill  of  patriotic  pride  that  comes  from  the  recital  of 
the  story  of  a  winning  fight  against  heavy  odds. 

Since  the  signing  of  the  armistice  there  has  developed 
a  marked  tendency  among  Americans  to  disparage  our 
country's  part  in  the  war,  to  accept  as  true  slanderous 
statements  and  inuendoes,  set  afloat  by  the  country's 
enemies  and  those  traitors  of  our  own  people  who  never 
really  desired  the  defeat  of  the  Central  Powers,  and  repeated 


AUTHOR'S   PREFACE 

and  kept  alive  by  the  unthinking  who  love  to  roll  juicy 
bits  of  gossip  under  their  tongues.  On  every  hand  one 
hears  it  stated,  and  accepted  as  fact,  that  America's  whole 
participation  in  the  Great  War  was  a  huge  failure;  that 
our  military  and  naval  machine  failed  to  function,  and 
that  our  equipment,  from  airplanes  to  submarines,  was 
worthless  and  insufficient. 

If  this  book  shall  prove  in  any  slight  degree  an  offset 
to  such  falsehoods  and  distortions  of  truth  and  a  counter- 
blast to  the  calumniators  of  our  country  and  our  country- 
men's achievements,  the  author  will  feel  amply  repaid  for 
the  time  and  labor  that  have  been  expended  upon  its  prep- 
aration. It  has  been  a  labor  of  love,  in  which  he  has  felt 
the  same  patriotic  pride  that  he  hopes  his  work  may  inspire 
in  every  true  American,  and  especially  in  those  Americans 
of  the  future — the  boys  of  to-day — to  whom  our  country 
must  look  for  the  fulfilment  of  its  great  destiny  in  the  re- 
shaping and  rebuilding  of  the  world. 

The  author  takes  this  occasion  to  express  his  thanks  to 
the  Secretary  of  War,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  the 
chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Public  Information  and 
the  members  of  its  staff,  all  of  whom,  throughout  the 
period  of  the  war  and  afterward,  so  freely  provided  him 
with  the  keys  and  passwords  that  enabled  him  to  penetrate 
behind  the  scenes,  as  it  were,  and  see  for  himself  what 
Yankee  ingenuity  was  really  accomplishing.  He  acknowl- 
edges his  indebtedness,  also,  to  the  many  officers  of  the 
army  and  navy  who  so  fully  and  freely  aided  in  every 
possible  way  in  the  collection  both  of  information  and  of 
illustrations.  He  owes  a  word  of  appreciation,  also,  to  the 
editors  of  Harper's  Magazine,  The  World's  Work,  Popular 
Science  Monthly,  Motor  Life,  The  New  York  Herald,  The 
Sun,  and  The  New  York  Times  for  courteous  permission 
granted  to  include  in  this  volume  several  chapters  and 
parts  of  chapters  which  have  previously  appeared  in  the 
pages  of  their  publications. 

FRANK  PARKER  STOCKBRIDGE. 

NEW  YORK,  March  3,  1920. 


YANKEE    INGENUITY 
IN    THE    WAR 


YANKEE    INGENUITY 
IN    THE    WAR 

i 

THE    MOBILIZATION    OF    SCIENCE    AND    INDUSTRY 

T^HE  war  that  came  to  an  end  with  the  signing  of 
A  the  armistice  on  November  n,  1918,  differed 
from  all  previous  wars  principally  in  that  it  was  a 
contest  of  brains  much  more  than  it  was  a  contest 
of  brute  force.  Machines  counted  for  more  than 
men;  minds  for  more  than  muscle;  the  only  really 
doubtful  question,  after  the  first  surprise  shock  had 
been  successfully  resisted  by  the  Allies  and  the  war 
settled  down  to  a  life-and-death  struggle,  was  whether 
the  technical  resourcefulness  of  England,  France, 
Italy,  and  America,  and  the  ingenuity  of  the  scientists 
and  engineers  of  these  countries,  could  match  and 
overmatch  the  scientific  and  technical  resources  of 
the  enemy. 

The  beginning  of  the  war  marked  the  climax  of  an 
era  of  scientific  research,  discovery,  and  invention 
that  had  made  the  half-century  that  ended  in  August, 
1914,  the  most  marvelous  chapter  in  the  record  of 
man's  conquest  of  the  forces  of  nature.  It  was  the 
half -century  that  gave  to  the  world  the  electric  light, 


2         YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  telephone,  the  bicycle,  the  automobile,  the  mo- 
tion picture,  the  phonograph,  the  X-ray,  the  wire- 
less telegraph,  the  airplane,  and  the  submarine. 
And  for  forty  or  more  of  the  fifty  years  Germany 
had  been  cunningly  appropriating,  adapting,  and  ex- 
ploiting these  and  a  thousand  other  inventions  and 
discoveries,  the  fruits  of  the  research  of  the  world's 
greatest  intellects,  until  she  had  convinced  herself 
and  had  all  but  persuaded  the  rest  of  the  world  that 
she,  and  she  alone,  held  the  master-key  that  would 
unlock  the  treasure-house  of  science  and  render  its 
riches  available  for  the  service  of  mankind.  So 
steeped  were  the  Germans  in  their  own  conceit  that 
they  believed  no  material  resources  competent  to  cope 
with  theirs  could  be  marshaled  against  them;  theirs 
was  the  last  word  in  mechanics,  in  chemistry,  in 
engineering;  of  what  they  did  not  have  the  rest  of 
the  world  must  be  in  ignorance. 

It  is  a  source  of  tremendous  satisfaction  to  be  able 
to  record  the  completeness  with  which  Germany's 
vaunted  leadership  in  the  world  of  science  and  inven- 
tion has  been  overthrown,  shattered,  and  demolished. 
What  literally  and  actually  happened  was  that  Ger- 
many was  crushed  and  broken  by  means  of  scientific 
discoveries  and  inventions  so  far  superior  to  her  own 
that  she  could  not  cope  with  nor  resist  them.  Ger- 
many had  for  forty  years  been  marshaling  her  technical 
resources  for  the  conquest  of  the  world;  what  Ger- 
many did  not  realize  was  that,  instead  of  being  ex- 
hausted, the  technical  resources  of  the  rest  of  the 
world  were  practically  inexhaustible  and  needed  only 
the  stimulus  of  necessity  to  be  called  into  action, 
with  overwhelming  consequences  to  those  who  first 
provoked  the  war. 

The  war  was  won,  in  fact,  by  Yankee  ingenuity  in 


I 

I 

i'l 

i  * 

*  I 
i  * 

(B  g 
f  | 
•< 

I 


4         YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  application  of  scientific  knowledge  and  technical 
skill  to  military  and  naval  ends.  From  the  very 
beginning  of  the  struggle  in  1914,  nearly  three  years 
before  the  United  States  became  a  belligerent,  the 
Allies  relied  upon  America  for  their  entire  supply  of 
many  kinds  of  munitions  of  war  and  for  a  large  pro- 
portion of  almost  all  of  their  essential  weapons. 
When  America  came  into  the  war  our  government 
mobilized,  not  only  an  army  of  fighting-men,  but  a 
scientific,  technical,  and  industrial  army  the  like  of 
which  had  never  before  been  assembled. 

We  had  everything  that  Germany  had  and  one 
thing  that  Germany  did  not  have,  the  organizing  and 
directing  genius  of  American  manufacturers,  which 
had  found  its  highest  expressions  in  peace  times  in 
the  method  of  making  standardized  articles  of  high 
quality  in  huge  volume  and  at  low  cost,  the  peculiarly 
American  method  known  as  "quantity  production." 

WTien  America  finally  entered  the  war  and  threw 
its  gigantic  resources  into  the  scale  the  seat  of  war 
shifted  from  the  Hindenburg  line  to  the  factories  of 
Bridgeport,  Pittsburgh,  Detroit,  Newark,  Cleveland, 
and  a  thousand  other  American  cities.  The  war  be- 
came a  contest  of  machine  power  as  much  as  of  man 
power.  It  was  not  only  a  question  whether  the  Allies 
could  hold  Verdun,  but  whether  Squantum  could  build 
destroyers  faster  than  Hamburg  could  turn  out  sub- 
marines, Bridgeport  produce  more  cartridges  in  a 
given  time  than  Koln.  The  outcome  of  the  war  was 
the  direct  result  of  American  quantity  production 
applied  to  the  manufacture  of  munitions. 

Quantity  production  is  the  manufacturing  method 
that  educates  the  tool  as  well  as  the  mechanic  and 
puts  the  power  of  a  thousand  'horses  and  the  skill 
of  a  thousand  brains  at  the  command  of  a  single  pair 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR         5 

of  hands.  We  have  all  seen  the  result;  I  have  tried 
to  tell  in  these  pages  something  about  many  of  the 
more  interesting  and  spectacular  achievements  in  the 
way  of  quantity  production,  as  well  as  to  describe 
specific  and  particular  inventions  and  applications  of 
scientific  knowledge  that  helped  us  to  defeat  Germany. 
But  even  such  an  impressionistic  picture,  painted,  as 


A  THREE-INCH   GUN   IN   ACTION 

So    rapidly    did    Yankee  artillerymen  learn  to  shoot  the   three-inch  gun  that  the 

discharged  shell  did  not  reach  the  ground  before  the  next  charge  was  .ready  to  fire. 

"Let  me  see  your  three-inch  machine-guns,"  a  captured  German  requested.     He 

could  not  believe  they  were  single-shot  guns. 


it  must  necessarily  be  within  the  limits  of  a  single 
volume,  in  the  broadest  of  brush  strokes,  cannot 
convey  an  adequate  sense  of  how  big  the  job  we  did 
really  was,  how  terrific  the  strain  01"  the  battle  against 
time,  without  at  least  a  peep  behind  the  scenes,  as  it 

were. 
2 


6         YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

I  went  to  Detroit  in  the  summer  of  1918  to  see  for 
myself  how  American  manufacturers  were  conducting 
their  part  of  the  war.  I  chose  Detroit  rather  than 
Bridgeport  or  Cleveland  or  Chicago  because  Detroit 
is  the  foremost  exponent  in  its  industries  of  quantity 
production.  I  found  Detroit  performing  mechanical 
miracles.  One  who  could  have  looked  unmoved  upon 
the  marvels  of  creative  achievement  then  already  in 
being  must  have  been  lacking  in  imagination  or 
sensibility,  or  both. 

Probably  the  business  men  of  Detroit  would  re- 
sent the  imputation  if  one  were  to  call  them  poets, 
but  if  the  essence  of  poetry  be  the  power  to  con- 
ceive grandly  and  to  express  grand  concepts  with 
rhythmical  force,  no  other  term  fits  them.  There 
was  no  escaping  the  sense  of  titanic  fancy,  ex- 
pressing itself  in  Homeric  measures,  in  the  face  of 
what  I  found  these  business  men  doing.  Dollars 
do  not  drive  men  to  such  heights  of  accomplishment ; 
war,  not  business,  was  the  source  and  mainspring  of 
these  vast  projects  and  their  still  vaster  execution. 
Detroit  was  not  thinking  or  talking  of  profits.  "It 
is  not  fashionable  to  make  money  out  of  war,"  one 
of  her  business  leaders  expressed  it.  Many  expected 
to  come  out  millions  poorer  than  they  went  in,  and 
were  glad  that  it  was  so. 

Detroit's  story  could  be  duplicated  in  many  cities. 
Wherever  munitions  were  made  men  threw  them- 
selves and  their  enterprises  wholly  and  unhesitatingly 
into  the  war,  placid  pastures  were  changed  overnight 
into  clangorous  cities.  The  things  Detroit  showed 
me  I  could  have  found,  or  their  parallels,  in  Bridge- 
port or  Newark  or  Dayton.  They  would  have 
pointed  the  same  moral,  for  everywhere  the  story 
was  the  same.  Miracles  were  performed  everywhere, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 


but  at  terrific  cost  in  money,  in  labor,  in  strain  and 
effort  to  make  up  lost  time. 
Take,  as  an  example,  the  case  of  the  Dodge  Brothers, 


.:,•  < 


THE    AMERICAN    THIRTY-FIVE-TON    TANK    PROPELLED    BY    A    LIBERTY 
MOTOR,    BALANCED   ON   THE   BRINK   OF   AN   EMBANKMENT 

merely  because  their  experience  and  achievement  are 
typical  of  what  occurred  everywhere.  They  have 
been  building  automobile  engines  for  years,  cars  com- 


8         YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

plete  for  some  years.  Their  big  organization  is 
geared  to  quantity  production  in  all  that  that  implies. 
When  we  went  to  war  they  went  to  Washington  and 
offered  themselves  and  their  organization.  "We  can 
make  anything,"  they  said.  "What  do  you  need?" 

Washington  didn't  know  what  it  needed  that  the 
Dodge  Brothers  could  make.  It  was  autumn  before 
they  were  sent  for. 

' '  Can  you  make  recoil  mechanisms  for  one-hundred- 
and-fifty-five-millimeter  howitzers?"  the  War  Depart- 
ment asked. 

' '  Yes, ' '  said  the  Dodge  B  rothers .    ' '  What  are  they  ? ' ' 

"They  are  something  like  this,"  replied  the  War 
Department,  showing  them  a  French  piece,  "only 
we've  improved  them.  Here  are  our  drawings.  You 
work  from  these.  Give  us  so  many  thousand  by  such 
a  date." 

They  did  not  wait  to  ask  questions,  but  hurried 
back  to  Detroit  to  evolve  a  plant  out  of  nothing,  to 
create  designs  for  machines  and  build  them. 

That  was  on  November  i,  1917.  In  early  June, 
1918,  I  went  through  their  ordnance  plant  and  saw 
them  turning  out  the  first  of  the  finished  pieces.  Let 
me  try  to  convey  a  faint  impression  of  the  miracle 
the  Dodge  Brothers  had  worked  in  the  intervening 
seven  months. 

First  you  must  realize  that  the  recoil  mechanism 
of  a  modern  field-gun  or  howitzer  is  not  only  one  of 
the  most  ingenious  devices  ever  conceived  in  the 
mind  of  man,  but  it  must  be  more  accurately  fashioned 
to  precise  dimensions  than  any  other  object  of  its 
size  and  weight.  To  make  one  you  take  a  ton  and 
a  half  of  steel  in  a  single  billet  eight  feet  long.  Length- 
wise of  this  you  bore  four  holes  from  about  three  to 
more  than  four  inches  in  diameter;  two  run  all  the 


YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR          9 

way  through,  two  half-way.  Then  you  shape  the 
outside  of  the  billet,  carving  it  down  at  some  places 
to  a  thin  wall  around  the  holes,  leaving  it  in  a  rigid 
mass  at  other  points.  You  hew  out  of  its  side  a 
recess  the  size  of  a  soap-box.  You  fashion  grooves 
and  lands,  channels  and  projections,  on  various  sur- 
faces. By  this  time  you  have  six  hundred  pounds  of 
metal  left;  the  rest  has  gone  into  the  scrap-heap. 
Now  you  must  finish  this,  grind  it  smooth,  polish  it 
inside  and  out,  and  when  it  is  all  done  every  dimension 
must  register  to  within  one  two-thousandth  of  an 
inch;  the  bore  and  the  line  of  the  eight-foot  holes, 
the  angles  of  the  recess,  the  thickness  of  the  walls, 
must  be  accurate  to  the  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a 
hair! 

The  Dodge  Brothers  owned  a  vacant  piece  of 
pasture-land  on  the  outskirts  of  Detroit;  and  there 
they  decided  to  erect  their  plant.  They  could  only 
guess  at  the  size,  for  they  couldn't  tell  offhand  how 
many  or  how  large  the  machines  and  tools  would 
have  to  be  and  there  was  not  a  second  to  lose.  It  is 
a  saying  in  Detroit  that  they  have  but  three  seasons — 
July,  August,  and  winter.  Unless  the  building  could 
be  put  up  before  the  heaviest  frosts  it  must  wait  till 
spring — and  our  army  needed  six-inch  guns.  So  the 
Dodge  Brothers  staked  out  twelve  acres  and  on 
November  igth  began  to  lay  a  foot  of  concrete  over 
the  whole  of  it;  they  couldn't  get  a  contractor  to 
accept  the  job.  With  the  thermometer  most  of  the 
time  many  degrees  below  zero,  there  was  finished 
in  four  months  a  huge  building,  850  by  600  feet, 
steel-framed,  brick-walled,  concrete-roofed;  roads 
were  graded  and  trolley  lines  extended,  a  new  electric- 
power  substation  built — a  million  dollars  or  so  of  the 
Dodge  Brothers'  own  money  spent  merely  for  the 


io        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

housing  of  a  plant  that  so  far  existed  only  in  the  mind's 
eye,  for  a  factory  building  is  not  yet  a  manufacturing 
plant. 

Machinery  was  scarce  and  hard  to  get.  One  officer 
of  the  company  spent  three  months  and  five  and  a 
half  million  dollars  buying  machinery  and  getting  it 
moved  toward  the  new  plant.  To  bore  the  four  holes 
in  one  operation  a  machine  had  to  be  devised.  Me- 
chanical engineers  and  draftsmen  worked  it  out, 
and  seventy-two  machines  were  built — huge  devices 
costing  many  thousands  each.  Nobody  stopped  to 
estimate  cost;  speed  was  what  counted.  Then  came 
the  most  delicate  and  difficult  work  of  all,  the  design- 
ing and  making  of  the  tools,  the  actual  cutting- 
heads  for  fashioning  the  steel  into  shape.  All  the 
machinery  does  is  to  serve  as  the  mechanical  hands 
to  hold  and  operate  the  cutting-tools.  Every  tool 
must  be  drafted  to  the  exact  size  and  shape  of  the  cut 
to  be  made  in  the  steel,  then  fashioned  from  high- 
speed steel  by  the  highest  paid  and  most  skilful 
mechanics,  the  toolmakers.  I  saw  a  milling-machine 
cutting-head  in  operation  that  cost  nearly  one  thou- 
sand dollars  in  labor  alone,  and  there  were  dozens 
exactly  like  it.  This  tool  performs  only  one  of  the 
forty  or  fifty  operations  necessary  to  fashion  the  rough 
billet  into  the  recoil-mechanism  bed. 

Have  I  made  it  clear  what  quantity  production 
involves  in  money,  time,  brains,  and  labor  before  a 
single  finished  article  can  be  turned  out?  It  took 
seven  months  and  seven  million  dollars  before  the 
first  recoil  mechanism  could  be  delivered.  Yet  its 
manufacture  involved  no  new  principles,  no  methods 
with  which  Detroit  (and  I  include  all  American 
manufacturers)  had  not  been  perfectly  familiar  for 
years, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR         11 

What  the  Dodge  Brothers  did  hundreds,  possibly 
thousands,  of  other  American  manufacturers  did  in 
as  many  other  items  of  the  vast  number  of  things  that 
had  to  be  made  to  carry  out  our  war  program  and 
equip  our  fighting  forces. 

Through  this  sort  of  co-operation,  there  has  come 
about  a  better  understanding  between  the  govern- 
ment at  Washington  and  the  business  men  of  the 
nation.  Washington  has  a  clearer  comprehension  of 
the  difficulties  and  the  problems  of  the  business  man, 
and  the  business  men  of  the  country  have  acquired 
new  knowledge  and  respect  for  Washington's  point  of 
view  and  ways  of  doing-  things,  and  for  the  men  of 
science  who  played  so  important  a  part  in  our  war 
preparations.  In  a  hundred  different  fields  of  applied 
science,  business  men  who  had  spent  their  lives  in 
particular  lines  of  industry  found,  when  they  under- 
took to  do  war  work  for  the  government,  that  the 
methods  they  had  found  good  enough  for  business 
purposes  were  not  good  enough  for  government  pur- 
poses, but  had  to  be  adapted,  refined,  and  improved 
to  meet  specifications  drawTn  up  by  the  scientific  ex- 
perts from  the  universities  and  research  laboratories, 
who  had  been  called  into  the  service  of  the  nation, 
put  into  uniforms,  and  given  the  opportunity  to  make 
practical  application,  in  uncounted  instances  for  the 
first  time,  of  the  principles  which  their  research  and 
experiments  had  demonstrated  to  be  in  advance  of 
current  knowledge  in  the  trade. 

At  first  the  theories  of  the  business  man  and  the 
facts  of  the  scientists,  who  are  seldom  concerned  with 
theories,  but  who  do  insist  upon  facts,  frequently 
clashed.  The  scientists  were  in  uniform,  however, 
with  bars  and  oak  leaves  and  eagles  on  their  shoul- 
ders, and  when  they  gave  orders  they  had  to  be  obeyed. 


12        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

And  before  very  long  a  good  many  thousands  of 
"practical"  men  began  to  discover  that  a  lot  of  the 
things  they  had  always  done  had  been  done  very 
badly  indeed;  that  a  lot  of  things  they  had  always 
maintained  couldn't  be  done  could  be  done,  and  were 
better  than  the  old  ways.  They  began  to  have  a  new 
respect  for  the  men  whom  they  had  formerly  addressed 
somewhat  contemptuously  as  "professor,"  but  whom 
they  now  saluted  as  "captain"! 

The  whole  wonder-story  of  our  country's  scientific 
and  technical  war  achievements  may  never  be  told; 
fragments  of  it  will  continue  to  be  told,  piecemeal, 
for  a  generation  to  come.  In  the  perspective  of  his- 
tory these  things  that  American  industry,  inventive- 
ness, and  ingenuity  accomplished  in  the  brief  space 
of  eighteen  months  will  rank  with  our  most  glorious 
achievements  by  land  and  sea;  they  were  no  less 
essential  to  the  winning  of  the  war  and  hardly  less 
heroic.  The  full  disclosure  of  these  things,  many  of 
them  among  the  most  carefully  guarded  military  and 
naval  secrets  while  hostilities  were  in  progress,  will 
furnish  also  the  final  convincing,  clinching  proof  that 
German  claims  to  scientific  and  technical  leadership 
are  based  on  nothing  but  egotism  and  moonshine. 

Enough  can  now  be  told  to  make  it  clear  that  we 
have  taken  forward  steps  in  the  application  of  science 
to  the  uses  of  humanity,  forced  by  the  pressure  of 
war  necessity,  that  might  not  have  been  taken  in 
fifty  or  a  hundred  years  of  the  slow  and  orderly 
processes  of  peaceful  development.  We  cannot  meas- 
ure the  cost  of  the  war  in  dollars  and  cents  alone, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  its  profits,  great  as  they  are 
in  their  spiritual  values,  have  material  aspects  in  the 
new  tools  and  instruments  which  have  been  put  in  the 
hands  of  man  a  generation  or  two  earlier  than  they 


YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR         13 

otherwise  might  have  been  available  for  his  use;  the 
methods  and  processes  by  means  of  which  life  may 
be  made  easier  and  better,  even  though  these  methods 
and  processes  were  devised  under  the  stress  of  con- 
flict to  make  the  taking  of  life  easier  and  swifter;  the 
new  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  our  resources,  our 
possibilities  and  our  limitations,  too  costly  to  seek 
out  in  time  of  peace,  but  which,  once  disclosed  by 
the  emergency  of  war,  is  of  imperishable  and  incal- 
culable value  in  rendering  easier  and  more  swift  the 
progress  of  the  race  toward  the  goal  of  the  ulti- 
mate absolute  liberation  from  every  form  of  bondage, 
physical  as  well  as  spiritual,  of  every  human  being. 


II 

THE    LIBERTY    MOTOR 

QEYOND  question  America's  biggest  single  war 
J-J  achievement  in  the  application  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge and  technical  resources  and  methods  is  the 
development  and  production  of  the  Liberty  motor. 
In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  written  and  said  about 
this  wonderful  engine,  it  is  probable  that  the  full 
extent  and  importance  of  what  was  accomplished  in 
its  production  can  never  be  grasped  except  by  the 
technical  men  who  took  part  in  the  work.  Let  me 
try  to  visualize  what  this  war  production  meant. 

On  the  day  the  armistice  was  signed  there  had 
been  built  and  delivered  15,131  twelve-cylinder  Lib- 
erty motors.  The  total  horse-power  developed  at 
Niagara  Falls  is  about  one  million.  These  Liberty 
motors  had  the  power  of  six  Niagaras — 6,052,400 
horse-power ! 

Engine  production  at  this  speed,  unprecedented  as 
it  was,  was  not  fast  enough.  Not  only  our  own  Air 
Service,  but  the  aviation  corps  of  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Italy  were  clamoring  for  Liberty  motors, 
and  when  the  armistice  was  signed  orders  had  been 
placed  for  51,100  Liberty  twelves  and  8, coo  Liberty 
eights,  as  part  of  a  total  program  of  95,993  aviation 
engines  which  the  United  States  would  have  con- 
tributed before  the  end  of  1919!  Engine  production 
was  going  on  at  the  rate  of  200  complete  Liberty 


WORKING  DRAWINGS  OF  THE  LIBERTY  MOTOR,  SHOWING  DETAILS  OF 
THE  INTERNAL  CONSTRUCTION  OF  THIS  WONDERFUL  ENGINE 


16        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

twelves  daily  when  the  war  was  stopped.  By  April 
it  would  have  reached  10.000  a  month,  with  no  limit 
in  sight. 

All  this  was  accomplished  in  eighteen  months.  On 
May  29,  1917,  the  first  drawings  of  the  design  of  the 
Liberty  motor  were  made.  On  July  4,  1917,  the  first 
engine  built  from  these  designs  was  flown.  Less  than 
nine  months  later  six  great  plants  were  producing 
Liberty  twelves  in  ever-increasing  volume.  In  be- 
tween there  was  a  heartbreaking  interval  of  prepa- 
ration for  quantity  production  that  literally  strained 
the  industrial  and  technical  resources  of  the  nation. 
Everything  was  new.  There  was  a  blank  sheet  of 
paper  on  which  could  be  written  either  success  or 
failure. 

When  the  United  States  declared  war  on  Germany 
on  April  6,  1917,  there  had  not  bee  a  made  in  America 
a  single  high-powered  aviation  engine  suitable  for 
use  under  war  conditions.  There  were  several  manu- 
facturers producing  low-powered  engines  suitable  for 
training-'planes;  a  great  many  of  these  engines  had 
been  built  and  placed  in  American-built  training- 
'planes  made  for  the  British  and  Canadian  govern- 
ments. One  American  company  was  just  getting 
under  way  on  a  contract  with  the  French  government 
for  the  production  of  the  Hispano-Suiza  motor,  one 
of  the  best  European  types  of  aviation  engine,  but 
developing  only  150  horse-power.  Another  American 
company  was  prepared  to  build  the  nine-cylinder 
rotary  Gnome  engine,  a  type  which  had  been  popular 
for  exhibition  flying  before  the  war,  and  which  could 
be  used  on  advanced  training-'planes.  We  had  noth- 
ing in  America,  however,  to  compare  with  the  British 
Rolls-Royce,  the  high-powered  Hispano-Suiza  or  the 
Lorraine-Dietrich  of  the  French,  the  Italian  Bugatti 


•Sff 


Plf 

Iff 


i8        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

and  Fiat,  or  even  the  German  Mercedes.  We  did  not 
even  know  what  was  needed,  either  in  airplanes  or 
aviation  engines,  to  meet  the  conditions  as  they  then 
existed  on  the  western  front.  Aviation  was  then  a 
part  of  the  work  of  the  Signal  Corps  of  the  army. 
The  books  of  the  Signal  Corps  showed  that  in  the 
nine  years  between  the  first  public  flight  of  a  heavier- 
than-air  machine  and  our  entrance  into  the  war  only 
118  'planes  of  all  types  had  been  delivered  to  the 
army;  most  of  these  had  been  destroyed  or  were 
obsolete  in  pattern.  Sixty- six  engines  had  been 
ordered ;  fifty -four  had  been  delivered.  The  army  had 
practically  no  material,  personnel,  or  experience  in 
the  designing,  producing,  or  use  of  aeronautical 
equipment. 

The  first  thing  we  had  to  do  was  to  ascertain  the 
needs.  A  commission  of  officers  and  civilians  was 
sent  to  Europe  to  study  the  engines  used  by  the 
Allies.  A  survey  was  made  to  find  out  what  was 
being  done  by  American  manufacturers  in  the  build- 
ing of  aviation  engines  for  European  governments 
with  the  idea  that  such  production  could  be  increased 
for  the  benefit  of  the  United  States.  But  while  these 
two  investigations  were  going  on  it  was  decided  to 
marshal  the  engineering  talent  and  facilities  available 
in  America  to  design  and  develop  a  suitable  engine 
of  our  own. 

It  was  found  that  the  time  that  had  been  required 
to  adapt  American  manufacturing  methods  to  the 
production  of  such  European  engines  as  the  Hispano- 
Suiza  and  Gnome  indicated  the  impossibility  of  adopt- 
ing a  European  design  in  the  hope  of  any  considerable 
production  under  two  or  three  years.  It  was  a  much 
more  logical  and  practical  undertaking  to  design  an 
American  engine,  with  reference  in  the  construction 


AN  END  VIEW  OF  THE  LIBERTY  MODEL  A,  THE  ARMY  TYPE  OF  MOTOR 


20        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  every  detail  to  American  manufacturing  methods 
and  facilities.  It  was,  obviously,  the  quickest  way 
to  produce  results,  since  such  an  engine  would  not 
require  radical  changes  in  prevailing  American  shop 
practice,  tool  design,  or  the  training  of  American 
mechanics. 

There  was  not  among  the  Allies  any  well-proved 
engine  of  a  horse-power  sufficiently  large  to  insure 
its  continuing  suitability  for  two  years  to  come. 
Several  were  in  process  of  development  over  there, 
but  up  to  May,  1917,  none  of  these  had  been  demon- 
strated to  be  an  assured  success,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  British  Rolls-Royce.  The  highest 
power  aviation  engine  then  in  use  by  the  Allies,  except 
the  twelve-cylinder  Rolls-Royce,  which  developed 
250  horse-power,  was  the  Lorraine-Dietrich,  a  French 
engine  of  about  the  same  power.  England  at  that 
time  was  manufacturing  or  experimenting  with  about 
thirty-seven  different  kinds  of  engines,  and  France 
had  no  less  than  forty-six  different  types,  necessitating 
almost  innumerable  quantities  of  repair  parts. 

As  soon  as  this  situation  became  known  to  our  army 
authorities,  in  May,  1917,  it  was  decided  to  proceed 
at  once  to  design  and  develop  a  single  type  of  engine 
with  unit  cylinders  capable  of  various  combinations 
and  which  in  either  four-,  six-,  eight-,  or  twelve- 
cylinder  engines  would  perform  nearly,  if  not  all,  the 
duties  which  war  requirements  would  exact,  and 
which  could  be  kept  in  repair  cheaply  and  easily. 

The  designing  of  the  American  aviation  engine, 
the  Liberty  motor,  was  a  story  so  romantic  that  when 
it  was  first  told  to  the  American  people,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1917,  it  was  received  with  incredulity.  It 
was  a  characteristic  American  conception,  carried 
out  in  a  thoroughly  American  way;  it  stands  as  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        21 

most  perfect  example  in  recent  technical  history  of 
that  Yankee  ingenuity  which  has  for  so  many  years 
excited  the  admiration  and  aroused  the  amazement 
of  our  European  cousins,  and  which  has  furnished 
the  theme  for  many  romantic  tales  by  writers  like 
Jules  Verne.  It  was  a  fresh  proof  to  the  doubters 


STEEL   CYLINDERS  FOR  LIBERTY   MOTORS 

Showing  how  the  thin-steel  water-jacket  is  attached  by  electric  welding.     This  is 
a  "Yankee  trick"  that  puzzled  the  Germans. 


on  this  side  and  the  scoffers  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic  that  America  had  lost  none  of  its  time- 
honored  resourcefulness,  that  the  Yankee  of  to-day 
is  as  ingenious  as  the  traditional  Yankee  of  half  a 
century  ago;  it  was  also  a  demonstration  and  a  warn- 
ing to  Germany  that  the  subjects  of  the  Kaiser  had 
no  monopoly  of  technical  and  scientific  ability. 

The  two  best  qualified  mechanical  engineers  in 
America  for  this  task  were  called  to  Washington  early 
in  May,  1917.  They  were  J.  G.  Vincent,  vice-presi- 
dent and  chief  engineer  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car 
Company,  of  Detroit,  and  E.  J.  Hall,  president  of 


22        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  Hall-Scott  Motor  Company,  of  Berkeley,  Cali- 
fornia. Mr.  Vincent  had  for  two  years  been  working 
on  the  development  of  aviation  engines  and  had  built 
two,  of  approximately  100  horse-power  and  200 
horse-power.  These  engines  had  been  designed  pri- 
marily for  durability  and  weighed  about  three  and 
a  half  to  four  pounds  per  horse-power.  They  had 
been  developed  and  tested  in  racing  automobiles,  but 
had  not  yet  been  tested  in  the  air.  Mr.  Vincent  had, 
however,  made  many  airplane  flights  and  had  been 
personally  for  a  number  of  years  a  close  student  of 
aviation  and  the  requirements  of  aviation  engines. 

Mr.  Hall  had  for  eight  years  been  building  various 
types  of  aviation  engines  for  foreign  governments, 
chiefly  in  the  Orient,  and  had  patiently  and  pains- 
takingly developed  an  engine  which  he  had  made  in 
four-cylinder,  six-cylinder,  and  twelve-cylinder  sizes, 
having  a  cylinder  bore  of  five  inches  with  a  seven-inch 
piston  stroke. 

The  first  requirement  of  the  aviation  engine  which 
these  two  men  were  told  to  design  as  speedily  as  pos- 
sible was  a  maximum  of  power  and  efficiency  com- 
bined with  the  minimum  of  weight;  the  average 
automobile  motor  weighs  from  six  to  ten  pounds  per 
horse-power,  while  the  new  aviation  engine  must 
weigh  two  pounds  or  less  per  horse-power.  Second, 
the  new  engine  must  be  able  to  run  as  required  at 
practically  its  maximum  power  or  speed  during  a 
large  percentage  of  its  operating  time;  automobile 
motors,  except  in  racing,  rarely,  if  ever,  run  at  maxi- 
mum power  or  speed  for  more  than  a  few  minutes  at 
any  one  period.  Third,  the  consumption  of  fuel  and 
of  lubricating  oil  must  be  as  limited  as  reasonably 
possible,  in  order  to  conserve  space  occupied  in  the 
'plane  and  weight  to  be  carried  in  the  air. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        23 

On  May  29,  1917,  Mr.  Vincent  and  Mr.  Hall  locked 
themselves  in  Room  201  in  the  New  Willard  Hotel 
in  Washington,  and  began  to  design  an  engine  cal- 
culated to  produce  200  horse-power  in  the  eight- 


ASSEMBLING  THE   CYLINDERS   OF   LIBERTY   MOTORS 
In  the  background,  the  electric- weld  ing  apparatus  for  attaching  the  water-jackets. 

cylinder  size,  and  300  horse-power  when  made  with 
twelve  cylinders.  The  task  imposed  upon  the  two 
engineers  was  a  gigantic  one.  To  agree  upon  the 
essential  features  of  an  engine  that  would  work  was 
not  difficult  for  men  of  their  experience ;  to  reduce  the 
agreed-on  elements  to  detailed  working  drawings,  in- 
volving the  most  precise  and  accurate  calculations  of 
dimensions  and  clearances,  was  a  piece  of  work  which 
in  ordinary  engineering  practice  would  have  occupied 
a  staff  of  designers  and  draftsmen  for  many  months, 


24        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

on  a  machine  as  detailed  and  complicated  as  an  avi- 
ation motor.  Vincent  and  Hall  did  it  in  five  days 
and  nights! 

It  does  not  detract  in  the  least  from  the  stupendous 
character  of  this  achievement  to  point  out  that  the 
Liberty  motor,  which  was  the  result  of  this  intensive 
feat  of  engineering,  is  a  composite  of  well-tried  and 
tested  elements,  principles,  and  methods.  Vincent 
and  Hall  did  not  go  into  the  hotel  room  with  nothing 
but  a  blank  sheet  of  paper,  a  set  of  drawing  instru- 
ments, and  their  imaginations;  they  had  with  them 
working  plans  of  internal-combustion  engines  of  many 
types,  and  an  enormous  experience  and  intimate  per- 
sonal knowledge  of  every  type  of  engine  that  had 
ever  propelled  an  airplane,  as  well  as  a  staff  of  drafts- 
men accustomed  to  making  exact  calculations  and 
reducing  rough  sketches  to  precise  measurements. 
And  in  designing  the  Liberty  motor  they  drew  heavily 
upon  the  experience  and  practice  of  others.  Some  of 
the  parts  were  copied  bodily  and  without  essential 
change  from  the  second  Packard  aviation  motor;  I 
have  personally  taken  the  actual  parts  from  this 
Packard  motor  and  placed  them  in  a  Liberty  motor, 
and  vice  versa.  The  cylinder  size  which  Mr.  Hall 
had  developed  in  the  latest  Hall-Scott  aviation  motor, 
five-inch  bore  and  seven-inch  stroke,  was  adopted; 
this  is  the  largest  cylinder  ever  used  in  a  mobile 
internal-combustion  engine,  except  the  Diesel  marine 
engine.  From  the  Cadillac  was  adopted  the  forked- 
end  connecting-rod.  From  the  German  Mercedes  was 
taken  the  lubrication  system.  The  crank-case  of 
aluminum  alloy  resembled  that  of  the  Rolls-Royce. 
All  previous  engines  of  the  so-called  V-type — that  is, 
having  two  rows  of  cylinders  set  at  an  angle  to  each 
other,  had  an  angle  of  sixty  degrees  between  opposite 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        25 

cylinders;  to  economize  space  and  to  lessen  head  re- 
sistance the  Liberty  motor  was  designed  with  the 
cylinders  set  at  an  angle  of  but  forty-five  degrees. 
This  was  a  very  radical  departure  from  accepted  prin- 
ciples of  engine  construction;  the  theory  of  opposed 
cylinders  had  always  been  that  the  greater  the  angle 
the  more  efficient  the  engine  and  the  less  vibration 
to  be  absorbed  by  the  machine.  Vincent  and  Hall 
believed  that  this  theory  was  based  upon  the  results 
of  poor  design  rather  than  upon  any  fundamental 
principle,  and  the  success  of  the  Liberty  motor  has 
proved  them  right. 

As  fast  as  drawings  of  the  different  parts  were  com- 
pleted they  were  passed  upon  by  the  Joint  Army  and 
Navy  Technical  Board,  and  hurried  to  the  Packard 
Motor  Car  Company  plant  in  Detroit,  where  a  staff 
of  expert  toolmakers  fabricated  each  separate  part 
by  hand.  So  rapidly  did  they  work  that  on  the  4th 
of  July,  1917,  less  than  six  weeks  after  the  designing 
of  the  engine  was  begun,  an  eight-cylinder  Liberty 
motor,  completely  set  up  and  running,  was  delivered 
in  Washington.  Tested  at  the  Bureau  of  Standards, 
the  new  engine  proved  so  much  more  efficient  in  all 
essential  respects  than  any  other  aviation  engine 
then  known  that  it  was  immediately  approved  and 
adopted  as  the  standard  motor  for  American  aircraft. 

Meantime  word  had  been  cabled  by  the  Signal 
Corps  representatives  overseas  that  the  pressing  need 
was  for  more  power  in  aviation  engines.  This  first 
eight-cylinder  engine  was  immediately  expanded  to 
the  twelve-cylinder  size.  The  first  twelve-cylinder 
Liberty  motor  passed  its  successful  fifty-hour  test 
on  August  25,  1917,  delivering  from  301  to  320  horse- 
power during  the  test.  In  September,  1917,  it  was 
given  its  first  trial  in  the  air  at  Mineola,  Long  Island, 


26        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  first  time  that  an  airplane  had  ever  ascended  from 
American  soil  with  more  than  150  horse-power  in  a 
single  engine. 

The  Liberty  motor  was  a  huge  success! 

The  hardest  task,  however,  was  yet  to  come.  As 
every  engineer  knows,  the  designing  of  a  machine 
and  the  painstaking  fabrication  by  hand  of  the  first 
experimental  model  is  one  thing;  to  equip  factories, 
install  machinery,  make  the  tools  and  manufacture 
the  finished  product  in  quantities  means  a  long,  pa- 
tient, tireless,  heart-breaking  strain.  The  Allies  were 
calling  for  our  airplanes,  our  men  were  going  over- 
seas to  fight,  and  we  had  not  the  means  wherewith 
to  equip  them  with  this  essential  arm  of  modern 
warfare.  The  situation  called  for  organizing  talent 
of  the  highest  order,  for  speed  unequaled  in  the  his- 
tory of  industry.  In  ordinary  commercial  practice 
it  would  have  been  at  least  a  year,  and  more  likely 
two  years,  before  any  manufacturer  would  undertake 
to  turn  out  the  finished  machines  in  quantities. 

On  the  day  the  United  States  became  a  belligerent 
there  had  reported  at  Washington  for  service  a  young 
lawyer  of  Detroit  who  had  lor  twelve  years  been  a 
member  of  the  United  States  Naval  Reserve.  His 
name  was  Harold  H.  Emmons.  He  had  given  up 
his  law  practice  a  few  years  before  to  become  manager 
of  a  manufacturing  concern  operating  nine  different 
plants,  which  he  had  directed  successfully.  At  the 
request  of  the  Aircraft  Production  Board  Lieutenant 
Emmons  was  detailed  by  the  Navy  Department  to 
service  with  the  army  and  placed  in  charge  of  engine 
production.  The  army  and  navy  had  agreed  to  com- 
bine their  aviation  programs  so  far  as  engines,  among 
other  phases  of  their  joint  needs,  were  concerned. 

The  task  which   Lieutenant   Emmons  faced   was 


MACHINING  LIBERTY-MOTOR   CYLINDERS 

They  are  first  formed  from  steel  tubing,  the  closed  end  being  welded  on.     Then  the 

shape  is  formed  by  hot-forging,  the  ring  for  attaching  the  water-jacket  shrunk  on 

and  welded,  and  the  cylinder  is  then  machined  to  its  final  dimensions. 


28        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

even  more  difficult  than  that  which  Vincent  and  Hall 
had  accomplished;  it  involved  more  elements  of  a 
pioneering  nature.  Nobody  in  America  had  ever 
built  gasolene  engines  with  steel  cylinders  except  as 
a  laboratory  experiment;  no  machine  bigger  than  a 
watch  had  ever  been  designed  for  such  minute  clear- 
ances and  close  tolerances;  there  was  not  a  manu- 
facturing plant  in  the  world  equipped  with  either 
machines,  tools,  or  skilled  workmen  competent  to  pro- 
duce these  engines.  Their  manufacture  involved  the 
invention  of  processes  which  had  never  been  used  in 
industry,  tests  and  measurements  accurate  and  minute 
beyond  anything  ever  done  on  so  large  a  machine. 
Beside  the  Liberty  motor  the  finest  automobile  en- 
gine ever  manufactured  is  a  crude,  clumsy  makeshift. 
Automobile  engines,  even  the  best  of  them,  are  made 
principally  of  cast  iron;  weight  is  no  objection  and 
strength  a  comparatively  minor  factor.  The  Liberty 
motor  is  made  of  aluminum  alloys  and  steel ;  to  pack 
440  horse-power  into  880  pounds  calls  for  the  elim- 
ination of  every  superfluous  ounce;  the  resources  of 
metallurgical  skill  were  taxed  to  give  every  part  the 
maximum  of  strength  with  the  least  amount  of  metal. 
An  engine  of  60  horse-power  is  a  giant  among  auto- 
mobile motors;  to  build  the  440  horse-power  Liberty 
there  wasn't  an  engine-shop  in  the  country  that  had 
machines  large  enough  to  hold  the  parts  while  they 
were  being  shaped.  New  machines  had  to  be  designed 
and  built;  then  they  had  to  be  equipped  with  jigs, 
tools,  and  fixtures — more  than  2,500  separate  and 
distinct  kinds  of  these  appliances.  Every  toolmaking 
shop  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Atlantic  coast  was 
commandeered  that  was  not  already  engaged  in  war 
work;  every  toolmaker  who  could  be  spared  from 
Naval  or  Shipping  Board  work  was  called  in.  Be- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        29 

cause  of  the  rush  and  the  need  for  utilizing  compara- 
tively unskilled  mechanics,  and  due,  too,  to  a  certain 
amount  of  pro-German  interference,  it  was  found, 
when  the  first  tools  were  delivered  at  the  engine 
plants,  more  than  80  per  cent,  of  them  were  unfit 


THE  FIRST  LIBERTY  MOTOR  TURNED  OUT  AT  THE  FORD   PLANT   BEING 
ASSEMBLED   FOR   ITS   FINAL  TEST 


for  use  and  had  to  be  made  over.  In  spite  of  this, 
deliveries  of  the  Liberty  motor  were  begun  in  No- 
vember on  the  original  design  of  a  330-horse-power 
engine.  General  Pershing  cabled  that  more  power 
was  needed,  though  none  of  the  Allies  had  engines 
even  as  powerful  as  that.  The  engineers  "stepped 
up"  the  motor  to  375  horse-power.  This  involved 
mechanical  changes  and  new  tools. 

Under  the  increased  power  the  crank-shafts  broke. 


30        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

The  ablest  metallurgist  in  the  automobile  industry, 
C.  Harold  Wills,  of  the  Ford  Motor  Company,  after 
weeks  of  study,  discovered  that  the  process  which 
had  always  been  used  for  crank-shaft  manufacture 
caused  internal  strains  in  the  forging,  and  devised  a 
new  process,  which  is  already  being  applied  to  auto- 
mobile manufacture — one  definite  contribution  to 
peace  industry  arising  from  the  war.  No  sooner  had 
the  crank-shaft  weakness  been  remedied,  by  re- 
designing not  only  this  part,  but  all  the  parts  working 
with  it,  than  the  officers  of  the  A.  E.  F.  demanded 
still  more  power,  and  the  Liberty  motor  was  again 
"stepped  up":  this  time  to  440  horse-power.  Many 
parts  had  again  to  be  enlarged  and  the  metallurgical 
constituents  changed — but  some  of  the  new  engines 
have  delivered  above  500  horse-power! 

In  the  beginning  nobody  knew  any  better  way  of 
making  steel  cylinders  than  by  boring  them,  slowly 
and  expensively,  out  of  blocks  of  steel ;  the  Ford  works 
devised  a  method  of  shaping  them  from  cold-drawn 
steel  tubing,  slicing  a  piece  of  tube  across  diagonally 
and  welding  the  turned-over  end  to  form  a  cap.  How 
to  fasten  the  thin-steel  outer  casing  of  the  water- 
jacket  to  the  cylinder  was  a  puzzle;  the  Packard 
Company  solved  it  by  an  electric-welding  process, 
simple  in  its  application,  yet  so  puzzling  to  the 
uninitiated  that  it  is  reported  the  Germans  were  un- 
able to  unravel  it  when  they  studied  the  first  Liberty 
motors  brought  down  in  their  lines. 

Detroit  contains  probably  more  mechanics  accus- 
tomed to  working  with  micrometer  calipers  and  gages 
than  any  other  city  in  the  world,  yet  so  delicate  are 
the  final  grindings  and  adjustments  of  the  Liberty 
motor  that  those  made  in  one  plant  are  not  interchange- 
able with  those  made  in  another  plant,  nor  even  with 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        31 

each  other,  without  painstaking  attention  by  a 
skilled  machinist.  It  is  not  deemed  sufficient,  for 
instance,  to  finish  the  contiguous  surfaces  of  the  two 
halves  of  the  aluminum  crank-case  as  well  as  this 
can  be  done  by  machinery;  before  they  are  perma- 
nently mated  they  are  "lapped"  or  ground  to  an  oil- 
tight,  gas-tight  joint  by  rubbing  them  against  each 
other  with  minutely  pulverized  ground  glass  as  an 
abrasive.  Those  two  halves  fit,  and  no  other  part 
can  thereafter  be  substituted  for  either  of  them  with- 
out going  through  the  same  process.  And  since  the 
crank-case  is  the  foundation  upon  which  the  whole 
engine  is  built,  a  variation  of  a  ten-thousandth  of  an 
inch  resulting  from  this  lapping  must  be  compensated 
for  in  the  fitting  of  every  part  subsequently  added. 
It  is  no  unfounded  assertion  that  better  automobile 
engines  than  were  ever  produced  in  America  will  be 
built  in  Detroit  in  the  years  to  come  because  of  the 
Liberty  motor.  Detroit  knew  more  about  engines 
than  any  other  city;  now  it  knows  about  working  to 
a  thousandth  of  an  inch  where  it  used  to  work  in 
sixteenths ! 

How  welt  Lieutenant  Emmons  succeeded  in  or- 
ganizing and  speeding  up  engine  production  is  dem- 
onstrated by  the  fact  that  on  May  29,  1918,  just  one 
year  after  the  beginning  of  the  first  design  of  the 
engine,  1,100  Liberty  motors  had  been  produced  and 
delivered  into  service.  In  January,  1918,  the  first 
three  Liberty  motors  to  go  overseas  were  shipped  to 
the  A.  E.  F.  In  March,  1918,  ten  were  shipped  to 
the  British,  six  to  the  French,  and  five  to  the  Italians. 
By  June  yth  tests  abroad  had  proceeded  so  far  that 
the  British  Air  Ministry  cabled  to  Lord  Reading,  the 
British  ambassador  at  Washington,  that  the  excellent 
results  obtained  from  the  Liberty  engine  placed  it  at 


32        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

once  in  the  first  line  of  high-powered  engines  and 
convinced  them  that  it  would  be  a  most  valuable 
contribution  to  the  Allied  aviation  program.  On 
September  26th  the  British  Air  Ministry  reported 
that  in  identical  machines  it  performed  at  least  as 
well  as  the  Rolls-Royce,  a  concession  the  importance 
of  which  can  only  be  appreciated  by  those  who  un- 
derstand the  devotion  of  the  British  to  the  motto, 
"Made  in  Great  Britain."  To  any  one  who  under- 
stands this  phase  of  British  character  the  admission 
of  the  equality  of  the  Liberty  motor  amounts  to  con- 
clusive proof  that  it  is  the  better  engine  of  the  two, 
which  means  unqualifiedly  the  best  aviation  engine 
yet  built.  The  Rolls-Royce  is  nearest  to  the  Liberty 
motor  in  power  and  efficiency,  but  it  weighs  100 
pounds  more  and  delivers  100  horse-power  less  than 
the  Liberty  motor,  while  its  maximum  production  in 
England  has  never  exceeded  seventy  engines  per  week. 
Engineers  of  other  nations  were  even  more  generous 
in  their  praise  of  the  Liberty  motor.  Birkhight, 
the  designer  of  the  Hispano-Suiza  engine  in  France, 
advised  Count  Poniatowski,  the  head  of  the  French 
Technical  Advisory  Board  on  Aviation,  that  the 
Liberty  engine  was  superior  to  any  high-power  engine 
developed  on  the  Continent.  Nor  were  these  merely 
idle  compliments.  The  British  government  at  once 
placed  an  order  with  the  American  government  for 
1,000  Liberty  motors  and  later  asked  for  another 
4,500  to  be  delivered  by  the  end  of  1918.  The  French 
made  inquiry  as  to  the  possibility  of  securing  20  per 
cent,  of  America's  total  output  of  Liberty  motors. 
The  Italian  government  also  indicated  a  desire  to 
purchase  a  large  number  for  immediate  delivery.  It 
had  been  planned  to  build  22,500  Liberty  twelves  to 
take  care  only  of  the  requirements  of  the  American 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        33 

army  and  navy.  With  this  recognition  of  the  supe- 
riority of  the.  Liberty  motor,  increased,  orders  for 
Liberty  twelves  up  to  48,000  were  placed,  and  8,000 
Liberty  eights  were  ordered,  while  the  English,  French, 
and  Italians  redesigned  their  'planes  to  adapt  them 
for  the  installation  of  the  Liberty  engine. 

At  the  time  the  armistice  was  signed  there  had 
been  actually  manufactured  and  delivered  15,572 
twelve-cylinder  Liberty  motors,  less  than  fifteen 
months  after  the  first  twelve-cylinder  Liberty  had 
been  made  and  tested.  Of  these,  3,742  had  been 
turned  over  to  the  American  navy,  1,089  shipped  to 
the  Allies,  5,323  delivered  at  airplane-manufacturing 
plants,  907  sent  to  aviation-fields  for  training  pur- 
poses, and  4,511  separate  engines  in  addition  to  those 
installed  in  'planes  shipped  to  the  A.  E.  F.  in  France. 

There  is  no  manner  of  doubt  that  the  successful 
development  of  the  Liberty  motor  and  its  production 
in  these  enormous  quantities  was  one  of  the  most 
important  of  the  deciding  factors  that  brought  about 
the  surrender  of  Germany.  So  long  as  Germany 
retained  the  control  of  the  air  she  saw  victory  ahead. 
Up  to  the  time  of  America's  entry  into  the  war  the 
balance  between  the  air  forces  of  Germany  and  of 
the  Allies  was  at  all  times  very  close ;  the  loss  of  a  few 
hundred  airplanes  by  either  side  could  at  any  time 
have  meant  the  difference  between  victory  and  defeat. 
Germany  scoffed  when  news  first  reached  that  coun- 
try of  America's  intention  to  put  into  the  air  within 
two  years  several  times  as  many  'planes  as  the  entire 
forces  of  all  the  armies  on  the  western  front  had  ever 
been  able  to  muster.  Germany  knew  it  could  not 
be  done.  By  November,  1918,  Germany  had  dis- 
covered that  the  impossible  was  being  done,  and 
surrendered  to  Yankee  ingenuity. 


34        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

The  troubles  of  Lieutenant  Emmons  and  the  build- 
ers of  aviation  engines  did  not  begin  and  end  with 
the  Liberty  motor  alone.  The  Le  Rhone,  the  Hispano- 
Suiza,  and  the  Bugatti,  three  new  European  types  of 
engines,  production  of  which  was  under  way  in 
America  when  the  war  ended,  involved  complicated 
and  difficult  mechanical  and  technical  problems.  These 
three  other  types  of  low-power  engines  are  used  by 
the  American  air  forces  for  various  purposes.  The 
Gnome  engine,  the  first  successful  rotary  motor  and 
for  years  before  the  Great  War  regarded  as  the  best 
of  all  aviation  engines,  was  just  being  got  into  fac- 
tory production  in  America  when  the  war  ended;  it 
was  designed  principally  for  use  in  advanced  training- 
'planes.  The  Bugatti  was  a  new  Italian  engine,  having 
sixteen  cylinders  arranged  in  blocks  of  four.  It  had 
given  good  service  on  the  Italian  front,  where  some 
of  the  officers  of  the  American  Air  Service  saw  it  and 
had  one  sent  over  to  this  country.  An  American 
motor  company  undertook  to  make  it  and  had  de- 
livered eleven  on  an  order  of  2,000  when  the  armistice 
was  signed. 

The  OX-5  engine  and  the  A-7-A  are  low-powered 
motors,  of  types  which  were  in  general  use  in  America 
for  aviation  before  the  war  began.  They  involve 
no  new  methods  or  principles  in  their  manufacture, 
being  built  of  cast  iron,  like  automobile  motors,  but 
of  lighter  design.  Of  the  OX-5  the  government  had 
more  than  eight  thousand  on  hand  when  the  war 
ended.  There  were  2,250  of  the  A-y-A.  The  training 
of  aviators,  both  in  the  army  and  the  navy,  is  not  to 
be  discontinued;  it  will  continue  as  a  permanent 
measure  of  national  defense.  For  this  purpose,  re- 
gardless of  changes  that  may  be  made  in  types  and 
designs  of  'planes — and  they  will  be  many — there  is 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        35 

a  sufficient  supply  of  engines  in  the  stock  on  hand 
of  these  two  kinds  for  ten  years  and  more  to  come. 

In  point  of  all-around  usefulness  for  commercial 
aviation,  as  well  as  for  such  a  variety  of  governmental 
uses  as  mail-carrying,  exploration,  surveying,  forest 
patrol,  etc.,  extremely  valuable  service  will  be  ren- 
dered by  the  4,101  Hispano-Suiza  and  the  1,178  Le 
Rhone  engines  which  were  on  hand  when  hostilities 
ceased.  The  Le  Rhone  is  a  new  type  of  rotary  engine, 
"the  finest  ever  built, "  army  officers  say.  It  develops 
80  horse-power  with  nine  cylinders.  This  engine 
was  developed  in  France  in  the  third  year  of  the  war. 
Our  officers  saw  it  in  use  and  advised  its  production 
in  America. 

Drawings  and  specifications  were  obtained  from  the 
French  makers,  not  without  a  good  deal  of  difficulty. 
Finally  they  reached  America.  The  drawings  proved 
almost  unintelligible,  the  specifications  impossible.  A 
cabled  request  for  better  specifications  brought  the 
reply  that  the  ones  sent  were  all  that  were  obtainable 
— and  these  contained  such  assertions  as  that  the 
crank-shaft,  the  point  where  the  greatest  strain  comes, 
was  made  of  mild  steel !  Nothing  could  be  done  until 
a  Le  Rhone  engine  was  obtained  and  shipped  over. 
Every  part  of  it  was  first  measured  and  copied  in 
exact  model,  then  turned  over  to  metallurgical  chem- 
ists, who  subjected  it  to  analysis,  while  American 
engineers  undertook  to  improve  the  design  of  the 
engine  construction.  As  a  result  the  Le  Rhone  en- 
gines turned  out  in  America  are  of  better  material 
than  the  French  makers  used,  and  a  loss  of  power  that, 
in  the  French  engine,  ran  as  high  as  33^  per  cent, 
has  been  reduced  to  3  per  cent.  Many  French  en- 
gineers who  were  inclined  to  scoff  at  American  manu- 
facturing methods  were  converted  when  they  had  an 


36        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

opportunity  to  witness  the  performance  of  some  of 
the  250  Le  Rhone  engines  made  in  this  country  and 
shipped  to  the  A.  E.  F.,  and  to  compare  them  with 
the  motors  of  the  same  type  made  in  their  own  plants. 
The  Hispano-Suiza  engine  is  a  Spanish  motor  which 
was  being  manufactured  under  contract  for  the  French 
government  by  an  American  company  when  the  Unit- 
ed States  entered  the  war,  although  actual  produc- 
tion had  not  begun.  This  is  an  eight-cylinder  engine 
and  is  the  only  motor  with  steel  cylinders  manufact- 
ured in  the  United  States  before  the  Liberty  motor 
was  produced.  It  is  made  in  three  sizes,  of  150,  180, 
and  300  horse-power.  It  is  an  engine  of  the  highest 
grade,  but  weighs  more  per  horse-power  than  the 
Liberty.  Like  all  other  aviation  engines,  production 
of  this  machine  was  placed  under  the  control  of  the 
Aircraft  Production  Board.  The  best  proof  of  the 
wisdom  of  the  Aircraft  Production  Board  in  under- 
taking to  design  and  build  a  completely  new  American 
motor  is  found  in  the  fact  that,  with  completed  en- 
gines before  them  to  work  from,  a  corps  of  French 
engineers  and  machinists  who  had  worked  in  the 
manufacture  of  them  and  adequate  capital  and  equip- 
ment, it  had  taken  the  Wright-Martin  Aircraft  Cor- 
poration thirteen  months  from  the  time  of  beginning 
to  make  the  tools  before  they  were  able  to  produce 
their  first  Hispano-Suiza  motor. 


Ill 

THE    CREATION    OF    THE    AIRPLANE    INDUSTRY 

IF  the  path  of  the  designers  and  builders  of  airplane 
engines  was  beset  with  obstacles,  that  of  the  men 
who  undertook  to  establish  an  airplane  industry  in 
America  was  even  more  perilous.  How  they  over- 
came it  will  some  day  be  recognized  as  one  of  the 
most  romantic  chapters  of  America's  industrial  and 
technical  history.  Misrepresentations  and  undue 
boastfulness  so  magnified  the  proposed  program  in 
the  public  mind  that  the  prevailing  impression  is 
undoubtedly  one  of  woeful  failure.  On  the  contrary, 
when  our  country's  almost  total  unpreparedness  in 
aircraft  plants  and  knowledge  of  the  methods  of  manu- 
facture is  considered,  the  achievement  of  producing 
in  eighteen  months  more  airplanes  than  all  the  Allies 
had  built  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  is  something 
to  be  proud  of. 

There  has  been  much  emphasis  laid  on  the  delays 
and  difficulties  incident  to  the  selection  and  determi- 
nation upon  particular  types  of  planes;  the  truly  ro- 
mantic story  of  the  airplane  as  developed  and  pro- 
duced under  war's  stress  is  one  of  almost  superhuman 
struggle  against  unknown  and  overwhelming  odds. 
There  was  no  chart  or  compass  for  the  unknown  seas 
that  had  to  be  navigated  by  those  who  undertook 
to  build  our  aerial  fleet.  There  was  at  least  a  body  of 
experience  in  engine  construction  and  tool  design  to 


3  8        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

guide  the  builders  of  engines,  but  no  manufacturer 
had  ever  engaged  in  any  business  comparable  to  the 
airplane  industry.  The  principles  of  construction 
had  to  be  mastered,  the  material  to  be  used  not  only 
to  be  determined  upon,  but  invented,  discovered,  or 
improvised.  To  decide  that  spruce  was  needed  was 
one  thing;  to  get  the  spruce  meant,  first,  exploration 
of  unmapped  forests,  then  the  development  and  ap- 
plication of  new  methods  of  lumbering,  of  seasoning, 
and  of  shipping  the  wood.  When  all  the  Irish  linen 
in  the  world  was  used  up  and  millions  of  yards  of 
fabric  were  still  needed  for  airplane  wing-coverings, 
a  new  fabric  had  to  be  invented  and  spindles  and 
looms  converted  to  its  manufacture.  The  whole  earth 
did  not  produce  the  oil  needed  to  lubricate  the  high- 
speed airplane  engines  at  the  temperatures  involved 
in  active  service;  plantations  of  castor-beans  had  to 
be  set  out  and  mills  erected  for  expressing  the  oil. 
Did  airplane  propellers  fly  apart?  We  invented  a 
glue  that  makes  a  joint  stronger  than  the  solid  wood 
itself!  And  these  are  but  a  few  of  the  problems  that 
had  to  be  solved  before  we  could  even  begin  to  build 
airplanes  in  quantity. 

When  hostilities  began  in  1914  the  airplane  was  a 
toy.  Its  manufacture  was  in  the  hands  of  inventors 
and  experimenters,  whose  aim  was  to  make  each  suc- 
ceeding machine  an  improvement  on  its  predecessor, 
with  the  result  that  it  is  extremely  doubtful  whether, 
outside  of  Germany,  there  had  ever  been  built  two 
airplanes  exactly  alike.  The  scientific  principles  of 
aerodynamics  were  barely  beginning  to  be  understood. 
A  thousand  engineers  with  a  thousand  conflicting 
theories  were  struggling  with  the  problems  of  stresses 
and  strains,  engine  power  and  wing  design,  but  the 
airplane  was  still  chiefly  a  toy,  and  an  extremely 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        39 

dangerous  toy  at  that.  Poets  and  men  of  vision  had 
dreamed  of 

.  .  .  Heavens  filled  with  commerce,  argosies  of  magic  sails, 
Pilots  of  the  purple  twilight,  dropping  down  with  costly  bales. 

But  hard-headed  men  of  affairs  looked  askance  at 
the  fantastic  dreams  of  passenger-carrying,  freight- 
carrying  airplanes.  Under  the  slow  and  orderly 


MAKING   THE    TIDE    HELP 

One  of  the  rafts  of  airplane  spruce  floated  to  the  desired  point  on  shore  by  scientific 
utilization  of  tides  and  ocean  currents. 

processes  of  peace-time  development  there  might 
have  come  a  time,  perhaps  fifty  years  hence,  perhaps 
a  hundred,  when  these  dreams  would  be  realized. 
Four  years  of  war  have  brought  them  to  what  amounts 
to  a  complete  realization. 

For  nearly  three  years  before  the  United  States 
entered  the  war  American  companies  were  building 
'planes  and  parts  of  'planes  for  the  Allies.  Their 
experience  was  the  only  foundation  we  had  on  which 
to  erect  the  huge  program  we  undertook  in  1917., 
To-day  the  manufacture  of  heavier-than-air  flying- 


40        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

machines  and  their  equipment  is  a  well-defined, 
thoroughly  understood,  and  fairly  commercialized 
industry.  The  men  in  control,  who  have  developed 
this  industry,  are  among  the  solid,  substantial  business 
men  of  America  and  Europe.  The  dangerous  toy  of 
five  years  ago  became,  first,  the  most  spectacular  of 
all  the  tools  of  war,  and  in  its  development  to  that  end 
became  as  safe  and  stable  a  vehicle  as  the  automobile 
itself,  in  that  risk  to  life  and  limb  in  a  properly  con- 
structed modern  airplane  is  hardly  greater  than  the 
risk  to  life  and  limb  in  an  automobile ;  the  most  serious 
danger  in  the  operation  of  either  lies  in  lack  of  skill 
or  want  of  care  on  the  part  of  the  driver. 

Aerodynamics,  from  a  mystery,  has  become  a  well- 
understood  branch  of  science;  theories  have  been 
scrapped;  demonstrated,  accepted  facts  have  taken 
their  place.  That  is  not  to  say  that  the  airplane 
for  any  particular  purpose  has  been  either  perfected 
or  standardized;  neither  has  the  automobile  or,  for 
that  matter,  the  steam-engine.  But  we  know  to-day 
how  to  build  airplanes,  in  quantities,  cheaply  by  com- 
parison with  methods  that  formerly  obtained,  what 
materials  to  use  and  where  and  how  to  obtain  them, 
and  we  have  actually  built  thousands  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  many  types,  adaptable  to  a  wide  variety 
of  commercial  peace-time  uses. 

Moreover,  in  the  development  in  America  of  the 
airplane  and  airplane-engine  industry  from  almost 
absolute  zero  to  a  state  of  productivity  almost  un- 
believable, in  a  period  of  eighteen  months,  we  have 
not  only  furnished  one  of  the  demonstrations  of  our 
technical  and  industrial  superiority  over  Germany, 
but  have  actually  added  to  the  world's  wealth  in 
many  collateral  and  unrelated  lines  of  activity  by 
the  enforced  necessity  of  devising,  inventing,  and  ap- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 


plying  materials  and  methods  that  were  unknown  or 
non-existent  before  America  undertook  the  gigantic 
task  of  building  an  aerial  fleet  that  would,  by  sheer 
weight  of  numbers,  beat  down  the  last  of  Germany's 
defenses. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  our  army 
possessed  few  airplanes  and  still  fewer  engines  suit- 


HOW  TO  CUT   A   LOG   WITHOUT 
WASTE 

This  diagram  shows  the  sawyer  how 
to  get  the  largest  number  of  feet  of 
straight-grained  airplane  stock  from 
spruce  logs.  The  cuts  are  made  par- 
allel to  the  bark;  the  coarse  heart-wood, 
indicated  by  the  inner  circle,  is  worth- 
less for  airplanes. 


HOW  TO  GET  ALL  STRAIGHT-GRAIN 
STOCK 

A  peculiarity  of  spruce  is  the  "twisted 
grain  "  that  is  frequently  found.  By 
sawing  the  logs  as  indicated  in  this 
diagram  it  has  been  found  possible  to 
obtain  practically  straight-grained  air- 
plane stock  from  such  trees. 


able  for  the  propulsion  of  aircraft.  An  official  survey 
of  our  military  airplane  situation  made  on  May  12, 
1917.  showed  that  in  the  eight  preceding  years  the 
United  States  army  had  ordered  334  airplanes  from 
sixteen  manufacturers;  these  were  of  ten  types  and 
thirty-two  different  designs,  and,  as  I  have  already 
pointed  out,  only  a  portion  of  them  had  ever  been 
delivered  to  the  army. 

When  the  armistice  was  signed,  eighteen  months 


42        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

later,  the  United  States  military  forces  had  on  hand 
12,285  airplanes.  'Plane  production  was  increasing 
at  a  rate  that  would  have  given  us  10,000  service- 
'planes  by  the  summer  of  1919,  although  it  had  been 
agreed  between  the  United  States  and  the  Allies  that 
this  country  should  contribute  proportionately  more 
engines  than  'planes,  partly  because,  while  we  could 
make  engines  faster  than  Europe  could,  they  had 
developed  their  'plane-making  capacity  to  a  higher 
degree,  and  partly  because  the  shipment  abroad  of 
engines  was  a  simple  matter  in  comparison  with  the 
shipment  of  finished  'planes. 

In  learning  how  to  build  airplanes  we  literally  did 
so  "from  the  ground  up."  There  is  no  phase  of  our 
war  story  that  carries  a  stronger  flavor  of  romance 
or  paints  a  truer  picture  of  a  winning  fight  against 
overwhelming  odds  than  that  of  the  "Spruce  Regi- 
ments." It  is  more  than  merely  an  interesting  story, 
for  in  learning  how  most  efficiently  and  economically 
to  obtain  the  spruce  lumber  needed  for  airplane  con- 
struction, or,  rather,  in  applying  the  knowledge  which 
the  United  States  Forest  Service  had  acquired  through 
years  of  scientific  research,  but  which  had  been  scoffed 
at  by  "practical"  lumbermen,  we  have  learned  how 
to  achieve  the  apparent  paradox  of  obtaining  high- 
grade  lumber  more  cheaply  and  at  the  same  time 
conserving  our  forest  resources. 

This  has  come  about  through  the  intensive  applica- 
tion of  scientific  methods  to  every  detail  of  the  process 
of  converting  spruce-trees  into  the  wings  of  the  army 
and  navy,  from  the  exploration  of  the  forest  to  the 
shipment  of  the  finished  lumber.  Moreover,  in  the 
treatment  and  technical  manipulation  of  the  wood  in 
the  airplane  plants  and  factories,  there  were  devel- 
oped, under  the  pressure  of  war  needs,  new  methods 


44        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

and  processes,  the  application  of  which  to  a  thousand 
of  the  arts  and  industries  of  peace  is  of  the  greatest 
value  and  importance. 

Spruce  was  essential  for  airplanes  and  airplanes 
were  essential  for  winning  the  war.  Other  factors 
contributed,  of  course,  from  doughboys  to  dread- 
noughts, but  without  the  numerical  superiority  of 
aircraft  on  the  side  of  the  Allies  Germany  would  not 
have  been  forced  to  quit  when  she  did.  And  nothing 
takes  the  place  of  spruce  for  airplanes.  Other  woods 
are  as  tough,  but  heavier;  the  difference  in  speed 
between  a  'plane  made  of  spruce  and  one  of  fir,  for 
instance,  on  the  same  model,  is  measured  by  miles 
per  hour.  Spruce  is  elastic,  absorbing  shocks  instead 
of  breaking  under  them.  Clear,  straight-grained 
spruce  does  not  splinter  when  hit  by  a  bullet;  the 
missile  passes  through,  leaving  a  clean,  round  hole 
that  does  not  materially  weaken  the  structure. 

Even  before  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the 
forests  of  the  East  and  parts  of  the  Far  West  were 
being  cruised  for  spruce  for  the  Allies'  airplane  needs. 
When  we  came  in  and  our  airplane  program  was 
fixed  at  22,500  training-  and  service-'planes  by  the 
spring  of  1919,  the  first  and  vital  question  to  be 
answered  was,  "Where  can  we  get  the  spruce?" 

Clear,  straight-grained  spruce  had  been  almost  an 
unknown  commercial  commodity  for  many  years; 
many  lumbermen  were  shipping  spruce  to  the  Allies, 
but  the  waste  was  terrific.  Out  of  a  million  feet  of 
lumber  perhaps  a  hundred  thousand  might  be  usable; 
this,  with  the  waste  involved  in  shaping  the  parts 
from  the  rough  timbers  or  "cants,"  might  build  a 
hundred  airplanes.  And  the  agents  of  the  Allies  were 
paying  up  to  $300  a  thousand  feet  for  this  stuff  and 
taking  whatever  they  could  get  at  that  price.  Clearly, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        45 

new  sources  of  spruce  and  new  methods  of  getting  it 
out  must  be  found  if  our  needs  and  the  growing  needs 
of  the  Allies  were  to  be  supplied.  So  the  government 
at  Washington  decided  to  go  into  the  lumber  business 
and  provide  spruce  for  everybody. 

There  was  spruce  in  plenty,  the  giant  Sitka  spruce 
especially,  with  its  huge  trunks  measuring  from  six 


A   SITKA   SPRUCE  LOG 

Many  of  these  trees  cut  up  for  airplane  stock  measured  twelve  feet  in  diameter. 

to  ten  or  twelve  feet  through  at  the  butt,  on  the  west 
slope  of  the  Coast  Range  in  northern  Oregon  and 
Washington.  But  that  country  had  never  been 
lumbered;  there  were  no  railroads,  hardly  any  other 
roads. 

Mills  were  a  long  way  off ;  besides,  there  were  labor 
troubles,  fomented  by  the  I.  W.  W.  and  German 
influences.  Lumbermen  looked  at  the  government 
program  and  said,  "It  can't  be  done."  One  man  said 


46        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

it  could  be  done.  He  had  been  thinking  about  this 
spruce  problem  and  the  Sitka  spruce  of  the  Pacific 
coast,  and  he  thought  he  knew  how  to  get  the  lumber 
out.  So  they  told  him  at  Washington  to  go  ahead  and 
see  what  he  could  do. 

This  is  what  he  did  in  a  little  more  than  one  year: 

Located  more  than  eleven  billion  feet  of  spruce  in 
a  fifty-mile  strip  of  forest. 

Built  thirteen  lines  of  railroad,  with  167  miles  of 
main  line  and  149  miles  of  branches,  to  tap  the  terri- 
tory containing  2,345,000,000  feet  of  this  lumber. 

Built  the  largest  sawmill  in  the  world,  and  three 
smaller  ones. 

Organized  the  "Loyal  Legion  of  Loggers  and  Lum- 
bermen," with  90,000  members,  and  put  an  end  to 
labor  troubles  in  the  logging  camps  and  mills. 

Sent  an  army  of  30,000  soldiers  into  the  woods  to 
fight  the  Hun  with  axes  and  saws. 

Produced  104,351,000  feet  of  airplane  spruce  and 
72,385,000  feet  of  fir,  of  which  69,879,000  feet  of 
spruce  and  52,932,000  feet  of  fir  were  shipped  to  the 
Allies. 

Cut  the  cost  of  spruce,  including  total  cost  of  rail- 
roads, sawmills,  and  all  permanent  improvements, 
to  $180  a  thousand  feet. 

These  are  merely  the  gross  results  of  the  work  of 
Brig. -Gen.  Price  P.  Disque,  the  man  whose  com- 
bination of  vision  and  force  gave  the  United  States 
and  all  the  Allies  spruce  when  they  needed  it  worst. 
•  When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  General 
Disque  had  tried  to  get  back  into  the  service  with 
his  old  rank  of  cavalry  captain.  He  had  enlisted  in 
the  regular  army  as  a  private  in  1899,  been  promoted 
to  a  commission  while  serving  in  the  Philippines,  and 
had  resigned  to  become  warden  of  the  Michigan 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        47 

State  Penitentiary.  Here  he  had  made  the  unique 
record  of  placing  a  penal  institution  on  a  self-support- 
ing basis,  by  developing  the  industrial  abilities  of  its 
inmates  and  marketing  their  product  at  prices  that 
paid  the  entire  cost  of  maintaining  the  institution. 

Instead  of  getting  back  into  the  cavalry  he  was 
commissioned  a  lieutenant-colonel  in  the  Signal  Corps 


HAULING   SPRUCE   LOGS   TO    THE    GOVERNMENT    AIRPLANE    SAWMILL 

Hundreds  of  miles  of  railroad  like  this  were  built  to  get  the  lumber  needed  for  airplanes. 

and  assigned  to  the  job  of  getting  out  spruce,  because 
he  had  once  expressed  himself  as  believing  that  all 
the  spruce  needed  could  be  got  out  of  the  west  slope 
of  the  Coast  Range.  He  was  not  an  engineer  and  had 
no  experience  in  lumbering,  but,  as  events  proved, 
he  was  an  organizer  with  a  profound  knowledge  of 
human  nature  and  a  rare  belief  in  the  efficacy  of 
scientific  methods  properly  applied. 

Old-fashioned  methods  of  lumbering  were  to  cut 
every  tree  in  the  area  logged.  Colonel  Disque  called 
on  the  Forest  Service  for  expert  advice,  and  the  first 
program  of  scientific  forestry  on  an  important  scale 
was  begun. 

' '  Cruisers ' '  were  sent  into  the  woods,  with  carefully 


48        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

prepared  maps  on  a  large  scale,  and  told  to  indicate 
on  these  maps  the  spruce  and  fir  trees  conforming  to 
certain  specified  requirements.  Commercial  lumber- 
men sat  back  and  laughed;  such  piecemeal  methods 
would  never  succeed,  they  were  sure.  But  the 
"cruisers"  came  back  with  their  maps  thickly  dotted 
in  certain  sections,  less  thickly  dotted  in  others, 
hardly  dotted  at  all  in  places  where  the  lumbermen 
had  advised  running  roads.  There  was  spruce  in 
these  places,  true,  but  not  big  enough  or  straight 
enough  for  what  was  needed. 

No  time  was  wasted  on  those  areas,  but  railroad 
lines  were  surveyed  and  run  right  into  the  heart  of 
the  thickest  stands  of  the  biggest  timber.  There 
was  no  guesswork  about  it.  Where  the  survey  showed 
a  railroad  cost  of  less  than  three  dollars  a  thousand 
feet  of  spruce  tapped  by  the  line,  it  paid  to  build  the 
railroad.  The  croakers  predicted  the  roads  couldn't 
be  built;  steel  couldn't  be  got  for  the  bridges  and 
trestles.  The  bridges  and  trestles,  built  of  logs,  but 
built  with  all  the  scientific  accuracy  of  the  most 
modern  steel  structure,  that  carry  these  thirteen  rail- 
roads into  the  woods,  are  marvels  of  engineering. 
And  into  the  tracts  where  there  wasn't  enough  air- 
plane spruce  to  pay  for  running  railroads  there  were 
built  motor  roads,  "corduroy"  paved,  so  that  motor- 
trucks could  bring  the  logs  out. 

With  the  old  method  of  sawing  logs  into  lumber  the 
log  is  first  ^'squared,"  then  sawed  into  beams  and 
boards.  That  answers  for  ordinary  purposes,  but  for 
airplanes  it  caused  great  waste,  for  the  grain  of  the 
tree  runs  parallel  with  the  bark,  and  the  timbers  got 
out  in  the  old  way  were  sawed  parallel  to  the  heart, 
so  the  grain  ran  diagonally.  This  meant  that  two- 
thirds  of  almost  every  timber  had  to  be  cut  away 


RIVING   A   SPRUCE   LOG  FOR   AIRPLANE   STOCK 

Every  piece  of  wood  that  goes  into  an  airplane  must  be  perfectly  straight-grained. 

As  the  spruce  grows  often  with  a  spiral  grain,  the  timbers  or  "cants"  must  be  split 

or  rived  from  the  log  instead  of  being  sawed. 


5o        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

before  a  straight-grained  piece  was  available.  There 
is  not  much  more  than  a  hundred  board-feet  of  lumber 
in  an  airplane,  but  it  used  to  take  a  thousand  feet  of 
stuff  as  it  came  from  the  sawmill  to  get  this  amount 
of  straight-grained  stock;  now  the  loss  is  less  than 
one-third  of  what  it  used  to  be. 

First  the  difficulty  was  overcome  by  splitting  the 
logs — "riving,"  they  call  it  in  the  lumber-camps.  A 
split  log  naturally  follows  the  run  of  the  grain.  Only 
rived  beams,  or  cants,  were  accepted,  until  Colonel 
Disque  got  his  big  sawmill  running  at  Vancouver. 
Washington.  Then  he  brought  in  expert  sawyers  from 
the  Eastern  hardwood  mills,  who  introduced  a  method 
of  sawing  that  follows  the  grain  wherever  it  runs.  Even 
the  spiral  grain  peculiar  to  spruce-trees,  but  never 
considered  of  importance  before,  does  not  baffle  the 
scientific  sawmill  man  who  uses  the  new  methods. 

For  some  unexplained  reason  spruce-trees  have  a 
tendency  to  twist  while  growing;  one  recently  felled 
in  Alaska  had  made  five  complete  revolutions  in  its 
eighty-three  years  of  life,  as  the  corkscrew-twisted 
grain  disclosed.  Clear,  straight-grained  planks,  fit  to 
go  into  airplanes,  are  sawed  from  even  these  twisted 
trunks  in  the  Vancouver  mill. 

The  commercial  mills  were  not  getting  out  enough 
good  airplane  stock — only  25  per  cent,  of  their  out- 
put was  fit  for  that  use.  Colonel  Disque  decided  to 
build  the  biggest  sawmill  in  the  world.  Lumbermen 
said  it  would  take  a  year.  It  was  finished  in  forty-five 
working  days!  In  this  mill  65  per  cent,  of  the  spruce 
brought  in  was  converted  into  perfect  airplane  lum- 
ber— and  a  big  commercial  market  was  made  for  the 
planks,  beams,  and  boards  that  did  not  come  up  to 
airplane  specifications,  in  sections  where  Western 
spruce  was  never  used  before. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        51 

The  Vancouver  mill  covers  about  five  acres.  It  is 
operated  for  quality  rather  than  quantity.  A  model 
of  a  finished  airplane  wing  beam  serves  as  a  guide  to 
the  sawyers  who  make  the  final  cuts  that  reduce  the 
logs  to  shipping  dimensions. 

Riving  great  logs  where  they  fall,  so  they  can  be 
brought  out  by  motor-truck;  utilizing  tides  and  ocean 
currents,  scientifically  studied,  to  bring  log  rafts  to 
shore  at  determined  points  without  the  dangerous 
towing  through  the  surf — these  and  a  hundred  tech- 
nical details  and  refinements  have  revolutionized 
lumbering  methods  in  the  Northwest,  because  the 
hard-headed,  "practical"  lumbermen,  having  seen 
the  results  demonstrated,  have  been  quick  to  adopt 
the  new  methods. 

Felling  trees  and  sawing  them  into  lumber  isn't 
all  that  has  to  be  done  before  you  build  airplanes 
out  of  the  product,  however.  Green  lumber  won't 
do,  and  the  processes  of  seasoning  that  have  been 
mainly  used  either  take  too  long — a  couple  of  years 
or  less — or  make  the  wood  crack  and  check  and  warp, 
or  both.  Here,  again,  science  scored  a  victory,  in 
the  application  to  war's  necessities  of  a  method  of 
seasoning  developed  through  patient  laboratory  re- 
search. 

Under  the  quickest  method  of  kiln-drying  lumber  in 
ordinary  commercial  use,  from  six  to  eight  weeks  were 
required,  and  lumber  so  seasoned  was  seldom  satis- 
factory, shrinking  in  dry  weather  and  swelling  in 
damp  climates.  Open-air  seasoning  took  a  year  or 
more;  either  process  took  no  account  of  internal 
strains  that  cause  splitting  and  "checking." 

For  years  the  Forest  Service  Laboratory  at  Madison, 
Wisconsin,  had  been  giving  the  most  intensive  scien- 
tific study  to  the  subject  of  wood-seasoning.  Almost 


52        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

at  the  beginning  of  the  war  an  experiment  was  per- 
fected on  a  commercial  scale.  The  patents  had  already 
been  dedicated  to  public  use  by  H.  D.  Tiemann,  the 
inventor  of  the  process,  and  it  was  immediately  put 
into  effect  for  the  seasoning  of  airplane  lumber. 

It  has  been  a  wonderful  success.  Huge  kilns  using 
the  Tiemann  process  have  been  erected  at  Vancouver 
and  other  sawmill  points  on  the  coast,  and  the  season- 
ing process,  which  formerly  took  many  weeks,  now 
takes  from  eight  to  fourteen  days!  Moreover,  the 
method  being  based  upon  scientific  study  of  the  in- 
ternal composition  of  wood  and  the  multiplicity  of 
elements  that  enter  into  its  behavior  under  given 
conditions,  wood  seasoned  by  the  new  process  is  not 
only  free  from  all  defects  of  the  old  methods,  but 
actually  stronger,  more  elastic,  and  tougher  than  when 
air-dried. 

The  Tiemann  dry  kiln  is  merely  a  closed  chamber 
in  which  the  lumber  is  piled  in  a  certain  specified 
way  and  the  temperature  and  humidity  are  definitely 
and  automatically  regulated  in  proportion  to  tho 
progress  of  the  seasoning  process.  The  lumber  is 
dried  from  the  inside  toward  the  surface,  at  a  speed 
carefully  calculated  for  each  kind  and  size  of  wood. 
Water-sprays  keep  the  confined  atmosphere  of  the 
kiln  at  a  predetermined  degree  of  humidity;  there  is 
no  guesswork  about  the  procedure  at  any  stage,  and 
the  result  is  perfect  lumber. 

I  hardly  need  to  point  out  the  permanent  industrial 
value  of  a  process  of  wood-seasoning  that  not  only 
saves  time  and  money,  but  gives  a  better  product 
than  was  obtainable  before  at  any  cost.  To  the 
furniture-maker  who  would  like  to  build  bureau- 
drawers  that  won't  stick  in  summer  and  rattle  in 
winter,  to  the  user  of  wood  for  every  purpose  from 


YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        53 

house-building  to  the  manufacture  of  ukuleles,  the 
war  demonstration  of  this  scientific  method  and  its 
commercial  practicability  has  proved  a  heritage  of 
great  and  continuing  value. 


^.Jfray 


S~Afj<y  60*r&3  ar-&  /< 
6f  ccxrtnt  u"#>  aj?/nfS 

**    & *t*%y*i* 

on*  frooce* 


•JtoeaMt/ia 


THE    KILN   THAT   MADE   OUR   AIRPLANE    PROGRAM   POSSIBLE 

Diagram  showing  the  operation  of  the  Tiemann  dry  kiln  for  seasoning  lumber  in 
two  weeks  or  less,  where  it  formerly  took  a  year  or  more.  Through  the  use  of  this 
kiln,  which  was  developed  by  the  Forest  Service  and  dedicated  to  public  use,  we 
were  able  to  turn  out  enough  seasoned  spruce  for  our  own  and  the  Allies'  airplane  needs. 


What  has  been  learned  about  the  manipulation  of 
lumber  by  the  makers  of  aircraft  is  not  without  its 
permanent  and  valuable  import  in  the  arts  of  peace. 

Not  only  have  the  builders  of  airplanes  had  to  master 
5 


54        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  fundamentals  of  the  new  science  of  aerodynamics, 
with  which  business  men  were  totally  unfamiliar,  but 
they  had  to  apply  to  the  fabrication  of  devices  of 
wood  and  canvas  manufacturing  and  production 
methods  that  had  not  before  been  applied  except  to 
metal  products.  They  learned  as  they  built,  until 
now  we  know  vastly  more  about  wooden  construction 
than  ever  was  known  before  by  any  considerable 
body  of  business  men. 

The  whole  fabric  of  an  airplane  is  composed,  as  one 
engineer  puts  it,  of  "struts,  stretchers,  stresses,  and 
strains."  Incredibly  light  and  thin  veneers,  glued 
together,  give  almost  the  strength  of  steel.  Braces 
and  beams  that  look  like  solid  wood,  but  that  are 
in  reality  only  shells,  with  the  internal  substance 
cut  away  by  carefully  determined  rules  and  measure- 
ments, until  they  weigh  half  what  they  did  before, 
prove  as  strong  as  solid  sticks.  As  delicate  as  a  grass- 
hopper's wing,  the  transverse  webs  that  shape  the  air- 
plane's wings  are  carved  from  the  thinnest  of  boards, 
yet  under  the  strain  of  the  piano-wire  braces  they 
hold  like  rigid  iron.  The  secret  is,  first,  straight- 
grained,  clear,  properly  seasoned  spruce,  and,  second, 
glue. 

Perhaps  nothing  more  revolutionary  has  resulted 
from  the  scientific  research  set  on  foot  by  the  war 
than  the  casein  glue,  invented  in  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Standards  and  now  universally  used  in 
airplane  construction.  Ordinary  glue  is  made  from 
hoofs,  horns,  cartilage  from  the  slaughter-houses,  from 
the  trimming  of  hides  and  other  animal  scrap;  the 
better  grades  are  made  from  the  sounds,  or  air- 
bladders,  of  codfish.  But  the  best  glue  ordinarily  in 
use  had  proved  not  good  enough  for  airplane  manu- 
facture. When  we  sent  airplanes  to  the  Mexican 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        55 

border  in  1916  they  literally  fell  to  pieces  in  the  hot, 
humid  climate ;  propellers,  which  are  built  up '  of 
laminations  of  wood,  laid  end  for  end  to  get  an  exact 
balance,  flew  apart  at  high  speeds;  the  glue  would 
not  hold. 

Seeking  new  sources  from  which  to  obtain  a  supply 
of  a  suitable  adhesive,  the  government  scientists  hit 


WORKERS   IN  A   NEW  ART 

Before  we  could  build  a  single  effective  military  airplane  we  had  to  train  the  thousands 

of  workers  in  an  industry  that  had  no  traditions,  no  history,  and  no  foundation  on 

which  to  build. 


upon  casein,  the  remarkable  substance  obtained  from 
skimmed  milk,  from  which  almost  anything,  appar- 
ently, can  be  made.  Casein  has  been  used  to  make 
billiard-balls,  for  a  thousand  other  things  to  imitate 
ivory  and  to  replace  celluloid  with  a  non-inflammable 
substitute,  but  that  it  would  yield  a  glue  was  un- 
dreamed of.  The  process  was  quickly  developed  and 
half  a  dozen  large  factories  were  soon  producing  this 
and  another  new  glue  made  from  blood,  in  great 
quantities. 


56        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

The  new  casein  glue  is  applied  cold.  It  sets  in 
six  hours,  and  there  is  no  chance  for  the  user  to  change 
his  mind  thereafter.  I  saw  a  propeller,  the  lamina- 
tions of  which  had  been  fastened  together  with  this 
glue,  that  had  been  boiled  for  five  days,  yet  under  a 
laboratory  test  the  wood  itself — tough  oak  and  walnut 
— pulled  apart  and  the  glue  did  not  yield ! 

I  do  not  need  to  point  out  the  commercial  and  in- 
dustrial importance  and  permanent  value  of  this  war- 
developed  invention;  any  one's  imagination  will  readily 
picture  furniture  that  can  safely  be  left  out  on  the 
summer  porch,  violins  that  will  not  suffer  from  sea- 
travel,  tables  and  chairs  that  can  be  placed  close  to 
the  radiator  without  falling  to  pieces — these  are  only 
the  perfectly  obvious  applications  of  the  new  glue. 
But  its  range  of  usefulness  may  be  far  wider.  Packing- 
boxes  put  together  without  nails  may  be  only  a  fore- 
runner of  houses  built  so  solidly  of  glued -on  veneer 
weather-boarding  that  they  will  outlast  the  centuries. 
With  the  new  adhesive  wood  is  welded  together  as 
solidly  as  the  blacksmith  welds  two  iron  bars  into  one. 

After  the  wood  has  been  fashioned  and  glued  and 
wired  into  place  comes  the  wing-cover  fabric,  with- 
out which  the  airplane  would  still  be  but  a  skeleton. 
Up  to  America's  entry  into  the  war  but  one  material 
was  available  for  this  purpose — Irish  linen.  Linen 
had  certain  definite  advantages  over  all  other  fabrics : 
the  fineness,  strength,  and  length  of  the  fiber  made 
it  at  once  the  most  durable  and  the  least  likely  to 
tear  when  punctured. 

A  bullet-hole  through  stretched  cotton  cloth  speedily 
becomes  a  huge,  jagged  rent  and  a  crash  follows; 
through  Irish  linen  it  remains  a  round  bullet-hole, 
and  the  'plane  can  fly  with  a  couple  of  dozen  or  more 
of  such  punctures.  One  French  'plane,  early  in  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        57 

war,  returned  safely  from  a  trip  over  the  enemy's 
lines  with  142  bullet-holes  in  its  wings. 

But  all  the  linen   Ireland  could  weave  was  not 
enough  for  the  stimulated  production  of  'planes  when 


COVERING   AN   AIRPLANE  S   WINGS 

Girls  sewing  the  Yankee  substitute  for  Irish  linen  on  the  wing-frame  of  a  De  Havil- 
land  4. 

we  got  into  the  war.  Little  flax  is  grown  in  Ireland; 
it  comes  mainly  from  Russia  and  Belgium.  These 
supplies  were  curtailed,  and  even  though  flax  could 
have  been  grown  elsewhere  it  would  have  to  be  sent 
to  Ireland  to  be  spun  and  woven,  for  in  no  other  ac- 
cessible part  of  the  globe  is  there  the  combination 


58        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  temperature,  humidity,  and  mineral  constituents 
in  the  water  necessary  to  "rot"  the  flax  and  make  it 
yield  up  fiber  of  precisely  the  quality  required. 

American  scientists  experimented  with  a  hundred 
substitutes.  Silk  would  not  answer,  and  could  not 
be  got  in  the  quantities  needed;  no  metal,  even  as 
light  as  aluminium,  would  stand  up  under  the  vibra- 
tion. There  was  one  American  fiber  that  might  do, 
sea-island  cotton.  It  was  used  only  for  sewing-thread 
and  for  the  finest,  sheerest  fabrics,  however.  There 
were  neither  spindles  nor  looms  adapted  to  convert 
it  into  the  heavy  fabric  needed  for  airplanes.  Labora- 
tory experiments  proved  that  it  could  be  woven  into 
a  wonderful  cloth.  Tests  of  this  cloth,  stretched 
diagonally  on  the  airplane  wings,  indicated  that  the 
perfect  substitute  for  Irish  linen  had  been  found. 

The  government  practically  commandeered  the  big 
cotton-mills  at  Fall  River  and  set  them  to  work  on 
the  new  cloth.  We  had  almost  used  up  all  the  Irish 
linen  we  could  get — 3,187,000  yards — when  the  new 
fabric  became  available.  At  the  time  the  armistice 
was  signed  we  had  produced  7,790,000  yards  of  air- 
plane cloth,  thousands  of  'planes  had  been  built  of  it, 
and  in  every  way  it  had  done  all  that  was  required  of 
it.  And  our  cotton  manufacturers  had  learned  some- 
thing new — how  to  make  a  cloth  that  will  supply 
hundreds  of  the  purposes  for  which  Irish  linen  has 
been  used,  that  will  wear  like  iron,  is  almost  water- 
proof and  looks  as  well  as  it  wears,  its  mercerized 
threads  giving  it  a  smoothness  of  finish  comparable 
to  linen  itself. 

After  the  cloth  has  been  stretched  on  the  wings 
it  is  treated  with  a  varnish  known  in  the  aircraft  in- 
dustry simply  as  "dope."  Dope  has  the  peculiar 
quality  of  shrinking  the  fabric  permanently,  so  that 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        59 

it  is  as  taut  as  a  drum-head,  and  of  rendering  it  water- 
proof, while  at  the  same  time  penetrating  the  fibers 
and  practically  gluing  them  together,  reducing  the 
danger  of  tearing.  The  principal  constituent  of  dope 
is  glacial  acetic  acid.  This  is  derived  from  the  dis- 


PUTTING   ON   THE    "DOPE" 

"Dope"  is  the  term  used  in  the  aircraft  industry  for  the  acetone  varnish  that  renders 

the  fabric  waterproof  and  at  the  same  time  shrinks  it  tight  to  the  frame  and  sticks 

the  fibers  together  so  the  cloth  does  not  tear  when  pierced  by  a  bullet. 


tillation  of  wood,  in  the  manufacture  of  wood  alcohol. 
To  produce  dope  in  sufficient  quantities  new  alcohol 
stills  were  set  up  and  new  processes  devised  that  are 
of  considerable  commercial  importance  in  many 
branches  of  industry. 

Castor-oil  is  the  only  lubricant  available  in  quanti- 
ties that  can  be  used  in  airplanes  when  high  altitudes 
are  to  be  negotiated.  In  the  extreme  low  temperatures 
of  the  upper  air  the  best  mineral  lubricants  chill  and 
even  freeze;  castor-oil  remains  fluid  at  many  degrees 


60        YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

below  zero.  Belligerent  Europe  was  using  the  world's 
supply  of  castor-oil,  so,  while  our  airplane-production 
program  was  getting  under  way,  the  government  ar- 
ranged for  great  castor-bean  plantations  in  Florida  and 
Texas  and  for  mills  to  express  the  oil  from  the  beans. 
By  the  time  we  had  the  'planes  and  engines  ready 
there  was  oil  aplenty  for  their  lubrication. 


IV 

AMERICAN    MILITARY    AIRPLANES 

AS  I  have  already  indicated,  there  was  in  the  United 
**  States  at  the  time  of  this  country's  entrance  into 
the  war  almost  no  experience  or  practical  knowledge 
of  modern  methods  of  airplane  designing  and  con- 
struction. While  European  governments,  for  six 
years  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  in  1914, 
had  made  huge  annual  appropriations  for  aircraft 
experimentation,  the  government  of  the  United  States 
had  given  so  little  encouragement  to  the  development 
of  this  distinctive  American  invention  that,  even  as 
late  as  the  summer  of  1917,  after  this  country  had 
become  a  belligerent,  we  had  no  authoritative  infor- 
mation, in  the  possession  either  of  the  government  or 
of  private  individuals,  upon  which  to  base  a  determi- 
nation as  to  types  and  designs  of  'planes  that  would 
be  useful  in  war,  nor  plants  equipped  to  build  fighting 
airplanes  and  their  essential  accessories.  Still  less 
did  we  have  either  facilities  for  training  aviators  or 
competent  instructors. 

Europe  was  still  experimenting,  it  is  true;  with 
'planes  as  with  a  thousand  other  elements  of  military 
equipment,  the  effort  to  overcome  Germany's  tre- 
mendous initial  advantage  kept  the  resourcefulness  of 
the  Allies  at  all  times  strained  to  its  utmost  limit. 
But,  although  none  of  the  Allied  nations  ever  suc- 
ceeded in  putting  into  service  on  the  western  front 


62        YANKEE   INGENUITY   IN  THE  WAR 

a  'plane  as  well  designed  for  its  purpose  as  the  best 
of  the  German  'planes,  the  French  and  English  had, 
by  midsummer  of  1916,  succeeded  in  taking  control 
of  the  air  away  from  the  enemy  by  sheer  force  of 
numerical  superiority  in  'planes,  and  of  better  engines 
than  the  Germans  had.  And  in  the  struggle  to  gain 
and  hold  air  control  there  had  been  developed  'planes 
which,  in  design  and  construction,  were  superior  in 
every  detail  to  even  the  most  advanced  experimental 
machines  that  had  ever  been  built  in  America. 

One  American  concern,  the  Curtiss  Company  at 
Buffalo,  had  been  building  training-'planes  for  the 
British  and  Canadian  governments  and  a  few  flying- 
boats  for  the  British  navy  before  America's  entrance 
into  the  war.  There  were  not  more  than  four  or  five 
other  airplane  manufacturers  who  had  ever  built  as 
many  as  ten  machines,  and  there  were  a  dozen  or 
more  companies  and  individuals  each  of  which  had 
built  from  one  to  a  half-dozen  airplanes  of  different 
types,  mostly  for  exhibition  purposes.  There  our 
aircraft-manufacturing  experience  began  and  ended. 
There  were  probably  a  dozen  men  in  America  who 
had  more  or  less  experience  in  the  designing  of  flying- 
machines,  but  none  who  even  remotely  comprehended 
the  progress  that  had  been  made  in  Europe  and  was 
competent  to  design  a  complete  fighting-machine. 
Not  a  single  airplane  had  ever  been  built  in  the  United 
States  equipped  to  carry  a  machine-gun,  nor  was 
there  an  aircraft  machine-gun  being  manufactured 
in  America.  These  facts,  which  I  have  here  briefly 
summarized,  must  be  thoroughly  understood  if  one 
is  to  realize  even  incompletely  what  a  triumph  of 
Yankee  resourcefulness  and  ingenuity  our  actual 
achievement  in  airplane  design,  construction,  and 
equipment  really  was. 


64        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

It  was  not  until  after  General  Pershing  had  arrived 
in  France  with  the  first  detachments  of  the  American 
Expeditionary  Forces  that  a  decision  was  arrived  at 
even  as  to  the  main  outlines  of  America's  aviation 
program  for  the  war.  Seventeen  months  later,  when 
the  armistice  was  signed,  there  had  been  completed, 
equipped,  and  put  into  service  by  the  United  States 
11,804  military  airplanes  of  all  kinds,  including  3,765 
combat-'planes,  of  which  2,899  had  been  shipped 
overseas  to  the  A.  E.  F.  This  does  not  take  into 
account  more  than  4,000  'planes  which  we  had  bought 
from  the  French,  in  pursuance  of  the  policy  agreed 
upon  between  General  Pershing  and  the  Allied  govern- 
ments immediately  upon  his  arrival  in  France,  that 
the  United  States  should  leave  the  production  of 
single-seat  fighters  and  pursuit-'planes  to  the  French 
and  British,  who  were  by  this  time  adequately 
equipped  to  produce  these  in  quantities,  and  that 
we  should  concentrate  our  efforts,  beyond  the  pro- 
duction of  necessary  training-'planes  for  our  own 
fighters,  upon  two-seated  observation-'planes  and  the 
larger  and  heavier  type  of  bombing-machine. 

Between  our  state  of  total  unpreparedness  in  avia- 
tion existing  on  June  i,  1917,  and  the  record  of  air- 
plane production  up  to  November  n,  1918,  there  lies 
the  story  of  a  stupendous  battle  against  time  and  the 
limitations  of  men  and  materials.  The  mechanical 
miracles  that  had  to  be  performed,  the  superhuman 
achievements  for  which  men  were  daily  called  upon 
in  the  execution  of  our  airplane  program,  were  so 
terrific  that,  had  they  been  foreseen,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  men  could  have  been  by  any  means  per- 
suaded to  undertake  them.  It  was  only  our  blissful 
ignorance  of  the  magnitude  of  the  obstacles  to  be 
overcome  that  made  possible  the  adoption  and  accept- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        65 

ance  of  the  'plans  which  ultimately  were  successfully 
worked  out. 

I  do  not  propose  to  tell  here  the  details  of  the  exe- 
cution of  the  entire  airplane  program,  romantic  as 


AMERICA'S  STANDARD  FIGHTING  AIRPLANE 

Two  views  of  the  De  Havilland-4,  the  two-seated  observation-  and  combat-'plane 
manufactured  in  this  country  for  use  overseas. 


are  many  of  the  episodes  of  the  conversion  of  fac- 
tories of  every  sort  into  aircraft  plants,  the  creation 
almost  overnight  of  a  huge  industry,  the  training  of 
tens  of  thousands  of  workers  in  new  arts  and  handi- 
crafts, and  the  reduction  to  standard  shop  practice 
of  construction  methods  that  had  previously  been 


66        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

individual  and  experimental.  I  can  touch  only  upon 
the  distinctively  American  contributions  to  the  science 
and  art  of  military  aviation  that  helped  us  to  win 
the  war. 

In  the  manufacture  of  the  'planes  themselves  we 
undertook  no  such  radical  and  revolutionary  departure 
from  European  practice  as  we  did  in  the  matter  of 
motors;  the  Liberty  motor  stands  as  the  one  com- 
pletely American  achievement  of  this  sort.  Our 
'plane  program  called  merely  for  the  duplication  of 
types  and  designs  already  proved  out  in  practice  by 
the  European  Allies,  with  some  adaptations  to  permit 
the  use  of  the  Liberty  motor  in  place  of  the  engines 
for  which  they  had  originally  been  designed.  For  the 
elementary  training  of  our  airmen  we  adopted  the 
standard  type  of  training- 'plane  already  being  manu- 
factured by  the  Curtiss  Company  for  the  British. 
It  was  the  original  intention  to  use  an  English  ma- 
chine— the  Bristol  biplane — for  use  as  an  advanced 
training- 'plane  for  our  own  aviators.  The  Bristol 
'plane  was  redesigned  to  take  the  twelve-cylinder 
Liberty  motor.  This  turned  out  to  be  our  most  seri- 
ous and  important  failure,  and  after  a  number  of  men 
had  been  killed  by  the  collapse  of  Bristol  machines 
on  their  first  trials,  due  to  faulty  engineering  in  the 
redesigning,  this  type  of  'plane  was  abandoned  and 
an  improved  type  of  Curtiss  machine  substituted  for 
advanced  training  purposes.  And  for  our  standard 
combat- 'plane,  for  observation  and  bombing,  we  copied 
as  closely  as  possible  the  English  De  Havilland-4. 

In  redesigning  the  De  Havilland-4  to  take  the 
Liberty  motor,  our  engineers  were  more  successful 
than  with  the  Bristol.  American-built  De  Havil- 
land-4's  in  service  on  the  western  front,  and  in  use  for 
advanced  training  of  airmen  in  America,  did  all  and 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        67 

more  than  was  expected  of  them.  The  American  De 
Havilland-4  is  a  two-seater  observation  biplane.  It 
measures  42  feet  53/8  inches  from  tip  to  tip  of  the 
upper  wings,  and  has  an  over-all  length,  fore  and  aft, 
of  29  feet  7  inches.  Resting  on  the  ground  it  measures 


THE   AMERICAN  CAPRONI   NIGHT-BOMBING   'PLANE 

When  the  war  ended  we  were  beginning  to  build  these  huge  machines  of  Italian 
design. 

10  feet  i  inch  to  the  highest  point  of  the  upper  wing. 
It  has  a  total  wing  surface  of  439  square  feet,  and  its 
total  weight,  fully  equipped  and  ready  for  flight,  is 
3,868  pounds,  or  8.8  pounds  per  square  foot  of  wing 
surface.  Equipped  with  the  4oo-horse-power  Liberty 
motor,  it  has  an  officially  recorded  speed  of  120  miles 
an  hour  at  a  height  of  6,500  feet.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  it  carries  a  heavier  load  per  square  foot  of  wing 
surface  than  any  of  the  observation- 'planes  used  by 
the  Allies,  the  greater  horse-power  of  the  Liberty 
motor  makes  it  the  fastest  of  all  the  observation- 
'planes  that  were  in  service  prior  to  the  signing  of  the 


68        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

armistice.  And  to  complete  the  statistical  record  of 
the  American  De  Havilland-4,  I  note  here  that  it 
can  climb  in  eight  minutes  to  a  height  of  6,500  feet, 
in  fourteen  minutes  to  the  height  of  10,000  feet,  and 
in  twenty-four  minutes  to  the  height  of  15,000  feet; 
that  its  "ceiling,"  or  limit  of  height  to  which  it  can 
fly,  is  approximately  20,000  feet  or  slightly  under  four 
miles. 

While  classed  as  a  combat- 'plane,  in  that  it  is  a 
machine  used  for  active  service  at  the  front  and  not 
primarily  and  exclusively  for  training,  the  De  Havil- 
land-4 is  not  one  of  the  types  of  airplanes  used  by 
fighting  fliers  for  the  daredevil  exploits  that  make  the 
stories  of  aerial  warfare  read  like  pages  from  the  ro- 
mances of  chivalry.  .All  of  the  airplanes  of  that  class, 
the  so-called  scout  and  pursuit  'planes,  used  by  Amer- 
ican airmen  in  the  war,  were  the  product  of  French 
manufacturers.  But,  spectacular  as  are  such  aerial 
combats,  they  are  only  incidental  to  the  real  purposes 
of  military  aviation  which  are,  first,  observation  of 
the  enemy's  movements  and  positions,  and,  second, 
the  dropping  of  bombs.  The  fast-flying,  high-climbing 
single-seat  fighting-'planes  have  as  their  reason  for 
existence  merely  the  protection  of  the  necessarily 
heavier  observation  and  bombing  'planes.  These 
heavier  'planes  carry  even  more  fighting  equipment 
than  do  the  single-seaters,  but  they  are  armed  chiefly 
for  defense.  In  another  chapter  I  describe  some  of 
the  "Yankee  tricks"  in  the  fighting  and  observation 
equipment  of  airplanes  that  in  the  last  months  of  the 
war  played  a  decisive  part  in  bringing  about  the 
Allied  victory. 

Early  in  the  war  airplanes  were  used  by  the  Allies 
solely  for  observation  purposes.  As  the  war  pro- 
gressed, and  German  raids  upon  hospitals  and  un- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        69 

fortified  towns  brought  home  to  the  Allies  the  full 
realization  of  the  fact  that  they  had  to  deal  with  a 
foe  that  had  deliberately  discarded  every  rule  of 
civilized  warfare,  the  use  of  aerial  bombs  against  the 
Germans  was  sanctioned  and,  by  the  time  the  United 
States  entered  the  war,  bombing  of  the  enemy's  posi- 
tions both  by  day  and  night  had  become  standard  mil- 
itary practice.  For  bombing- 'planes,  also,  we  adopted 
European  models,  the  De  Havilland-g  for  day 
bombing,  a  machine  differing  only  in  minor  details 
from  the  De  Havilland-4 ;  for  night  bombing  we  began 
the  construction  in  this  country  of  the  Handley- 
Page,  the  largest  of  all  military  airplanes,  and  the 
Caproni,  an  Italian  'plane  almost  as  large.  At  the 
signing  of  the  armistice  we  had  built  and  delivered 
to  the  A.  E.  F.  one  hundred  of  the  great  Handley- 
Page  'planes,  measuring  100  feet  across  the  wings, 
with  an  over-all  length  of  62  feet  10  inches  and  a 
height  of  22  feet.  These  great  'planes,  weighing  more 
than  14,000  pounds,  and  with  a  wing  surface  of  1,642 
square  feet,  can  carry  nearly  a  ton  of  bombs  in  addi- 
tion to  the  crew  of  four  men,  and  fly  at  a  speed  of 
eighty-two  miles  an  hour.  The  Caproni  is  almost 
as  powerful  a  machine,  although  of  less  wing  spread. 
It  flies  at  a  higher  speed  than  the  Handley-Page, 
and  carries  approximately  the  same  useful  load  of 
bombs.  American-built  Handley-Pages  and  Ca- 
pronies,  the  former  equipped  with  two  Liberty  motors 
each,  and  the  latter  with  three,  rank  among  the  note- 
worthy technical  achievements  of  the  American  air- 
plane industry,  so  suddenly  developed  under  war 
pressure  from  practically  nothing  at  all.  Airplanes 
of  both  these  types,  although  built  from  European 
designs,  made  better  records  in  the  air  in  every  respect 
than  their  exact  prototypes  produced  on  the  other 


yo        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

side,  so  cleverly  did  their  American  builders  apply 
the  methods  of  construction  that  had  been  worked 
out  in  this  country  in  the  course  of  learning  how  to 
build  flying  craft. 

One  of  the  most  important  details  in  which  the 
later  American  airplanes  excelled  those  of  Europe  was 
the  adoption  of  the  so-called  "stream-line"  wire  for 
stays  and  guys  instead  of  the  round  wires  and  cables 
that  had  always  been  used.  The  problem  of  air 
resistance  has,  from  the  beginning,  been  one  of 
the  most  difficult  for  aircraft  designers  to  solve.  Be- 
fore the  war  began  it  had  been  discovered  that  the 
blunt-nosed,  long,  tapering  body  enabled  a  'plane  to 
make  higher  speed  than  the  old-fashioned  machines 
had  been  capable  of.  The  principle  is  exactly  that 
used  in  ship  construction.  Naval  architects  long 
ago  learned  that  the  more  closely  they  could  model 
their  craft  on  the  lines  of  a  fast-swimming  fish,  like 
the  mackerel,  the  less  resistance  there  would  be  to 
their  passage  through  the  water.  So  every  part  of  a 
modern  airplane  is  designed  to  present,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, only  smooth  surfaces  to  the  air  through  which 
the  machine  passes,  and  to  taper  off  in  carefully  cal- 
culated curves  from  front  to  rear;  for  what  slows  down 
the  flying  craft  is  not  so  much  the  head  resistance 
of  the  air  as  it  is  the  friction  of  the  air  against  the 
surfaces  of  the  wings  and  body  and  the  suction  or 
"drag"  caused  by  the  partial  vacuum  created  when 
the  stern  is  tapered  too  abruptly.  And  just  as  one 
can  tow  a  large  boat  through  the  water  with  much 
more  ease  than  a  comparatively  small  tub,  so  it  was 
found  that  changing  the  shape  of  the  exposed  wires 
that  hold  the  airplane  wing  structure  together  from 
a  circular  cross-section  to  the  shape  of  a  flattened 
ellipse  made  a  material  difference  in  the  speed  of  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        71 

'plane.  Tested  on  the  De  Havilland-4,  the  change 
from  round  wires  to  "stream-line"  wires  made  a  dif- 
ference of  more  than  six  miles  an  hour,  and  with  the 
huge  Handley-Page  and  Caproni  bombing-'planes 
the  difference  was  even  more  marked.  And  when  the 
war  ended  an  American  manufacturing  concern  had 
perfected  a  method  of  producing  these  "stream-line" 
wires  so  flat  as  to  be  almost  ribbon-like,  and  yet  as 
strong  as  the  piano-wires  and  cables  previously  used, 
and  costing  little,  if  any,  more. 

In  the  last  few  months  of  the  war  another  type  of 
observation-'plane,  the  Le  Pere,  was  beginning  to  be 
made  in  America.  This  is  of  a  French  design,  sim- 
ilar in  its  general  appearance  to  the  De  Havilland-4 
but  with  many  finer  details  of  line  and  in  its  construc- 
tion. None  of  the  Le  Pere  'planes  were  in  service 
when  the  war  ended,  although  one  had  undergone 
official  tests  and  proved  to  be  faster  than  the  De 
Havilland  at  all  elevations,  and  able  to  climb  more 
rapidly  and  higher,  although  weighing  slightly  more 
per  square  foot  of  wing  surface. 

So  far  we  have  considered  only  the  American  pro- 
duction of  European  designs  of  airplanes,  and  only 
those  made  for  the  army.  But  while  this  plan  of 
copying  European  designs  seemed  to  be,  and  probably 
was,  the  only  way  that  offered  any  hope  of  getting 
any  adequate  supply  of  American  'planes  into  the  air 
on  the  western  front  in  time  to  save  the  Allies  from 
defeat,  American  inventive  genius  did  not  stop  func- 
tioning with  the  adoption  of  this  program,  nor  were 
the  designers  and  builders  of  American  types  either 
asleep  or  entirely  neglected. 

,  Just  as  the  war  was  coming  to  a  close  a  new  type 
of  fighting  airplane,  original  and  unique  in  design, 
and  possessing  many  points  of  superiority  over  any 


72        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

machine  then  in  use,  was  perfected  by  a  young 
American  engineer,  Grover  Cleveland  Loening.  The 
Loening  machine,  an  observation- 'plane  carrying  two 
passengers,  is  at  once  the  smallest  and  lightest,  as 
well  as  the  fastest,  of  all  military  airplanes  so  far  pro- 
duced. The  Loening  machine  is  a  monoplane,  a 
return  in  this  respect  to  the  class  of  airplanes  most 
highly  favored  by  both  the  Germans  and  the  Allies 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  Prior  to  1914  the  French 
had  developed  the  monoplane,  a  type  of  machine 
almost  unknown  in  America.  The  famous  German 
Taube  'planes,  of  which  so  much  was  heard  early 
in  the  war,  were  monoplanes,  and  so  were  some  of 
the  first  British  scout-'planes.  At  the  end  of  the  war, 
however,  there  was  not  a  single  monoplane  type  in 
use  by  any  of  the  Allies  or  the  Germans.  The  aban- 
donment of  the  monoplane  was  due,  not  to  any  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  the  biplane,  but  because  the  latter 
could  be  more  readily  produced  in  large  quantities 
by  comparatively  inexpert  workmen,  with  less  risk 
of  imperfections  that  might  prove  fatal  to  the  flier. 
Previous  types  of  monoplanes,  however,  had  been 
exclusively  single-seat  machines,  with  the  pilot  so 
located  that  his  range  of  vision  was  greatly  curtailed, 
making  it  very  difficult  for  him  to  protect  himself 
successfully  from  attack.  In  the  Loening  monoplane 
both  of  these  difficulties  are  overcome.  On  its  official 
test,  under  the  observation  of  army  authorities,  the 
Loening  'plane  achieved  a  ground  speed  of  143^ 
miles  an  hour,  and  at  6,500  feet  elevation  it  made 
138.2  miles  per  hour  with  full  military  load.  This 
compares  with  135  miles  an  hour  for  the  swiftest  type 
of  French  ' '  Spad  "  and  131  miles  an  hour  for  the  fastest 
of  the  British  "Sopwith"  biplanes.  The  only  military 
'plane  having  an  official  record  of  a  higher  speed 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        73 

than  this  is  the  Italian  "S.V.,"  with  142  miles  an 
hour. 

The  Loening  monoplane  has  the  wings  attached  to 
the  top  of  the  body,  and  they  are  cut  away  so  that  the 
pilot,  who  sits  between  them,  has  not  only  a  clear 
view  in  every  direction  from  the  zenith  to  the  horizon, 
but  also  downward  and  sideways  over  a  very  large 


THE   FASTEST   YANKEE   MILITARY     PLANE 

The  Loening  monoplane,  America's  answer  to  German  superiority  in  'plane  design. 

arc  on  each  side,  while  the  observer's  vision  is  almost 
entirely  unobstructed  in  any  direction.  The  Loen- 
ing 'plane  has  a  wing-spread  of  32  feet  and 
weighs  but  1,300  pounds  without  its  military  equip- 
ment and  passengers.  Fully  equipped  and  ready  to 
take  the  air  with  two  passengers,  it  weighs  2,608 
pounds.  In  other  words,  this  remarkable  little  ma- 
chine can  carry  a  load  equal  to  its  own  weight,  whereas 
the  average  load-carrying  capacity  of  all  other  air- 
planes is  about  half  of  the  weight  of  the  bare  machine. 
The  Loening  monoplane,  equipped  with  a  3oo-horse- 
power  Hispano-Suiza  engine,  has  an  official  record 
of  5  minutes  12  seconds  for  climbing  to  6,500  feet; 
9  minutes  12  seconds  to  10,000  feet,  and  18  minutes 


74        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

24  seconds  to  15,000  feet.  In  every  sort  of  maneuver- 
ing this  machine,  with  two  passengers,  has  equaled 
the  best  performance  of  the  single-seat  scout-'planes 
of  the  British  and  French. 

Its  designer,  Mr.  Grover  Cleveland  Loening,  was 
only  thirty  years  old  when  this  revolutionary  airplane 
was  accepted  by  the  army.  He  had,  nevertheless, 
had  almost  as  long  an  experience  in  airplane  design 
and  construction  as  any  one  in  the  world,  so  new  is  the 
whole  art  of  heavier-than-air  flying.  He  had  taken 
up  aviation  while  a  student  at  Columbia  University, 
from  which  he  was  graduated  in  1911.  The  follow- 
ing year  he  built  the  first  monoplane  flying-boat. 
Then  he  became  assistant  to  Orville  Wright  in  the 
designing  and  manufacturing  of  airplanes,  and  in 
July,  1914,  was  appointed  chief  aeronautical  engineer 
of  the  United  States  army  and  stationed  at  the  Signal 
Corps  Field  at  San  Diego,  California,  where  he  wrote 
his  book,  Military  Airplanes,  which  has  since  become 
an  official  text-book  at  the  aviation-schools  of  the 
American,  British,  and  Canadian  governments.  He 
resigned  from  the  government  service  to  go  into 
commercial-airplane  manufacture,  and  in  1917,  after 
the  United  States  had  entered  the  war,  he  went  to 
Europe  and  made  a  first-hand  personal  study  of  types 
of  military  airplanes  then  in  use,  as  a  result  of  which 
he  brought  out  the  machine  which  is  quite  generally 
regarded  as  being  America's  most  important  contri- 
bution, next  to  the  invention  of  the  airplane  itself,  to 
military  aviation,  and,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
the  German  Fokker-7,  the  most  formidable  aerial 
fighting-machine  ever  devised. 

Tests  of  captured  Fokker-7's  made  in  France  and 
Belgium  in  the  autumn  of  1918,  under  the  direction 
of  Lieut.-Col.  E.  J.  Hall,  U.S.A.  one  of  the  designers 


THE   AIRFLANE   OF   THE    "ACES 

The  famous  "Spad"  single-seater  pursuit- 'plane,  a  French  machine  made  for  the 
American  army  under  the  arrangement  for  specializing  aircraft  production. 


THE    "D"   TYPE    SEAPLANE 
This  is  the  sort  of  flying  craft  carried  on  the  deck  of  a  war-ship  for  scouting  purposes. 


76        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  the  Liberty  motor,  demonstrated  that  that 
machine,  if  adequately  engined,  was  superior  to  the 
best  of  the  Allied  fighting  aircraft  in  the  essential 
elements  of  horizontal  and  climbing  speed,  ease  and 
safety  in  maneuvering  in  the  air,  visibility  from  the 
pilot's  seat,  and  comfortable  riding  qualities. 

While  the  program  of  airplane  production  which 
has  just  been  reviewed  was  to  some  extent  for  the 
joint  benefit  of  both  the  army  and  navy,  and  entirely 
so  in  so  far  as  the  Liberty  motor  is  concerned,  the 
Navy  Department,  and  aircraft  manufacturers  work- 
ing under  its  direction,  were  developing  seaplanes  and 
flying-boats  to  a  degree  of  perfection  not  before  at- 
tained. Unlike  the  army,  which  depended  entirely 
upon  private  contractors,  the  navy  built  its  own  air- 
craft-manufacturing plant  at  the  League  Island  Navy 
Yard,  Philadelphia.  Authorized  on  July  7,  1917,  the 
plant,  a  permanent  steel  structure  covering  a  ground 
area  of  160,000  square  feet,  was  built  in  three  months 
at  a  cost  of  a  million  dollars.  Three  months  later  it 
had  expanded  itself  to  five  times  its  original  size,  and, 
besides  building  seaplanes  complete,  the  navy  was 
having  parts  made  to  its  own  designs  in  hundreds  of 
commercial  plants  throughout  the  country  and  as- 
sembling them  at  the  League  Island  factory.  The 
seaplane  proper  differs  in  no  essential  respect  from 
the  ordinary  airplane,  except  that  instead  of  rubber- 
tired  wheels  to  enable  it  to  run  along  the  ground  it 
is  equipped  with  pontoons  under  the  body  and  at- 
tached to  the  tips  of  the  lower  wings,  so  that  it  may 
light  upon  and  arise  from  the  water.  High  speed  is 
not  so  important  a  factor  in  the  seaplane  as  is  en- 
durance; the  Liberty  motors  used  by  the  navy  are 
geared  down  from  their  normal  1,800  revolutions 
a  minute  to  about  1,400,  reducing  their  power  some- 


AMERICA  S   FIRST   GIANT   SEAPLANE 

The  NC-i,  which  carried  51  persons  in  flight,  and  which  was  sunk  off  the  Azores 
while  flying  across  the  Atlantic. 


Official  photo  U.  S.  Naval  Air  Service 
THE   FIRST   AIRPLANE   TO   CROSS   THE   ATLANTIC 


The  NC-4  ("NC1 


means  "  Navy-Curtiss ")   as  she  started  from  Trepassey  Bay, 
Newfoundland,  for  the  Azores. 


78        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

what,  but  greatly  increasing  the  length  of  time  they 
can  remain  in  the  air  on  the  same  supply  of  gasolene. 
By  far  the  most  spectacular  and  important  phase 
of  the  navy's  aviation  program,  however,  was  the 
development  and  perfection  of  the  flying-boat.  The 
flying-boat  is  as  distinctly  American  as  is  the  airplane 
itself.  Instead  of  being  merely  an  airplane  equipped 
with  pontoons,  it  is  actually  a  boat  fitted  with  wings. 
Glenn  H.  Curtiss,  who  made  public  flights  in  an  air- 
plane even  before  the  Wright  Brothers,  invented  the 
flying-boat.  Under  the  direction  of  the  navy,  the 
design  of  the  flying-boat  was  perfected  in  1918,  and 
just  before  the  end  of  the  war  the  first  flights  were 
made  in  the  gigantic  NC-i.  This  huge  biplane  meas- 
ures 126  feet  across  the  wings,  while  the  hull  of  the 
boat  is  more  than  50  feet  long.  It  is  propelled  by  three 
Liberty  motors,  and  on  one  of  its  first  public  flights 
carried  fifty-one  passengers,  afterward  making  a  suc- 
cessful flight  to  Rockaway  Beach,  Long  Island,  from 
Langley  Field  on  Hampton  Roads,  an  airline  distance 
of  approximately  300  miles,  in  4  hours  and  20  minutes. 
So  successful  were  the  experiments  with  this  first  great 
flying-boat  that  several  others  of  the  same  type  were 
immediately  constructed,  a  fourth  Liberty  motor 
being  added  to  the  later  models,  in  one  of  which,  the 
NC-4,  Lieutenant-Commander  Read  made  the  first 
flight  across  the  Atlantic. 


V 

AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY   AND   AIRPLANE   EQUIPMENT 

I  HAVE  indicated  some  of  the  difficulties  that  had 
to  be  overcome  and  the  strain  imposed  upon  the  in- 
genuity and  resourcefulness  of  American  scientists, 
engineers,  and  manufacturers  before  we  were  able  to 
produce  the  necessary  airplanes  and  their  engines, 
and  establish  their  manufacture  on  a  basis  that  would 
insure  a  sufficient  and  continuous  supply.  But  all 
the  airplanes  and  all  the  Liberty  motors  that  we  were 
finally  able  to  turn  out  would  have  been  useless  for 
military  purposes  without  a  tremendous  variety  of 
equipment,  with  the  design  and  manufacture  of  which 
we  were  even  less  familiar  than  we  were  with  the 
designing  and  manufacture  of  'planes  and  engines 
themselves. 

There  had  never  been  built  in  America  an  airplane 
carrying  a  machine-gun;  the  instruments  with  which 
our  'planes  were  equipped  were  of  the  simplest  pos- 
sible nature,  for  determining  altitude  and  direction. 
We  had  first  to  learn  what  devices  had  been  found 
useful  by  the  European  Allies  for  the  military  equip- 
ment of  airplanes,  then  to  devise  ways  and  means  of 
making  these  or  improving  upon  them,  and  then 
undertake  their  manufacture.  When  we  finally  sent 
completely  equipped  De  Havilland-4's  to  France, 
they  carried  instruments  and  equipment  which  in 
almost  every  item  and  detail  represented  scientific 


80        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

and  technical  advances  over  anything  that  had  been 
produced  in  Europe.  In  the  eighteen  months  in 
which  the  United  States  was  actually  a  belligerent 
we  had  invented  in  this  country  and  begun  to  manu- 
facture many  totally  new  devices,  without  which  no 
airplane  is  now  regarded  as  completely  equipped,  and 
had  introduced  striking  improvements  on  apparatus 
previously  in  use. 

The  equipment  of  a  military  airplane,  apart  from 
the  propelling  mechanism,  falls  into  five  classes. 
There  are,  first,  the  instruments  and  apparatus  nec- 
essary for  the  most  successful  operation  and  guidance 
of  the  aircraft  itself;  then  there  are  the  devices  requi- 
site for  the  comfort  and  safety  of  the  pilot  and  ob- 
server in  flight;  apparatus  for  signaling  and  com- 
munication must  be  provided;  there  is  then  the 
special  equipment  for  observation.  And  all  of  these 
would  be  of  little  avail  were  the  machine  not  also 
equipped  with  weapons  of  offense  and  of  defense 
against  the  efforts  of  the  enemy  to  bring  it  down.  In 
addition  to  all  of  these  five  classes  of  equipment,  the 
heavy  bombing- 'planes  carry  a  sixth,  the  mechanism 
for  dropping  bombs,  which  was  the  latest  of  all 
developments  in  aerial  warfare. 

The  primary  purpose  of  aircraft  in  war  is  as  a  means 
of  observation  of  the  enemy's  positions.  For  every 
phase  of  aerial  warfare,  except  that  of  bomb-dropping, 
is  secondary  to  the  function  of  aircraft  as  a  means  of 
ascertaining  the  enemy's  whereabouts  and  movements. 
Spectacular  and  thrilling  as  are  the  stories  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  the  famous  "aces,"  the  modern  knights- 
errant,  whose  single-handed  combats  are  reminiscent 
of  the  days  of  chivalry,  these  aerial  duels  have  no 
military  value  or  purpose  except  that  of  protecting 
the  observation-'planes  and  balloons  from  attack  by 


AIRPLANE   M.\P  OF   WASHINGTON,   D.    C. 

Composed  of  hundreds  of  aerial  photographs  matched  and  pieced  together 


82        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  enemy  and  preventing  the  enemy's  observers 
from  obtaining  the  information  they  are  seeking. 
The  amount  of  damage  that  can  be  inflicted  upon 
the  enemy  by  means  of  airplanes,  other  than  by  drop- 
ping bombs,  is  so  trifling  that  the  risk  and  cost  would 
not  justify  their  use  for  fighting  purposes  alone. 

Very  early  in  the  war  the  Allies  found  that  the 
best  results  from  the  use  of  the  airplane  for  observa- 
tion could  be  obtained  by  means  of  photography. 
Here,  as  in  almost  every  other  field  of  applied  science, 
Germany  had  a  distinct  advantage  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war.  Germany  had  developed  photographic 
apparatus  especially  for  airplane  use;  the  aerial  ob- 
servers of  the  Allies  had  to  compete,  in  the  beginning, 
with  short-range,  portable  hand  cameras.  Germany 
had  trained  hundreds  of  men  in  the  new  art  of  reading 
aerial  photographs ;  the  Allies  had  to  learn  it  all  after 
they  got  into  the  war.  But  here,  as  in  other  fields, 
Germany  made  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  because 
her  enemies  had  not  prepared  themselves  in  these 
directions  they  were  unable  to  do  these  things.  When 
the  Allies,  and  especially  when  the  United  States 
took  up  seriously  the  development  of  aerial  photog- 
raphy, it  was  carried  so  much  farther  and  developed 
to  such  a  higher  pitch  of  perfection  than  anything 
Germany  had  dreamed  of  that  no  Prussian  camou- 
flage could  hide  the  Huns'  movements  from  us  in  the 
latter  days  of  the  war;  hardly  could  clouds,  even,  pre- 
vent the  photographing  of  every  detail  of  the  enemy's 
positions,  while  our  observers  remained  themselves 
unseen  from  the  ground! 

Beyond  a  doubt,  Germany  relied  upon  her  practical 
monopoly  of  the  optical-glass  industry  to  keep  the 
nations  opposing  her  in  the  field  from  being  equipped 
with  high-grade  lenses  for  photography,  for  range- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        83 

finders,  and  for  field-glasses,  necessary  to  war,  on  any 
large  scale.  For  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  the 
manufacture  of  the  best  grades  of  glass  for  these  pur- 
poses had  centered  at  Jena,  in  Prussia ;  many  grades 
essential  to  the  manufacture  of  modern  high-speed 
lenses  were  not  made  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 
The  University  of  Jena  had  established  great  labora- 
tories for  research  in  glass-making  and  lens  develop- 
ment, and  the  German  government  had  subsidized 
extensive  manufacturing  plants  which  made  the  pho- 
tographic and  other  lenses  for  the  whole  world. 

By  the  end  of  1914  the  importation  of  optical  glass 
had  become  difficult  and  uncertain.  One  American 
firm  had  begun  some  experiments,  others  established 
laboratories,  and  the  Bureau  of  Standards  of  the 
United  States  Department  of  Commerce  set  some  of 
its  scientists  to  work  on  the  problem.  Glass  that 
answered  one  important  purpose  of  Jena  glass,  that 
of  material  for  test-tubes  and  other  laboratory  ap- 
paratus, was  soon  developed  and  has  proved  so  much 
better  than  anything  Germany  ever  made  that  there  is 
no  possible  chance  of  any  future  German  competition. 
Great  Britain  succeeded  in  getting  good  production 
of  some  grades  of  glass  that  gave  acceptable  results 
when  ground  into  camera  lenses,  but  by  1917,  when 
the  United  States  entered  the  war,  the  optical-glass 
situation  had  become  critical.  Such  as  France  and 
Great  Britain  were  able  to  produce  was  inadequate 
for  even  their  needs;  if  we  were  to  take  an  effective 
part  in  the  war  it  was  imperative  that  we  make  our 
own  glass. 

Of  all  American  institutions  there  is  none  that  is  so 
distinctly  and  exclusively  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of 
pure  science  as  the  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washing- 
ton. When  its  scientists  were  called  upon  for  aid 


84        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

they  responded  with  enthusiasm.  A  party  of  scien- 
tists from  the  Geophysical  Laboratory  of  the  Car- 
negie Institution  was  sent  to  Rochester,  the  center 
of  photographic  lens  grinding  in  America,  and  for 
seven  months  from  April,  1917,  all  of  the  energies  of 
the  laboratory  were  centered  at  this  point,  while  the 
Bureau  of  Standards  pursued  its  researches.  By  the 
end  of  1917  the  last  German  secret  had  been  disclosed 
and  the  manufacture  of  glass  comparing  with  that  of 
Jena  for  every  purpose  was  under  way  on  a  com- 
mercial basis  in  America.  Glass  manufacturers  in 
other  cities  were  enlisted,  and  to-day  it  may  fairly 
be  said  that  there  is  nothing  the  Germans  have  ever 
done  in  the  manufacture  of  photographic  lenses  that 
we  are  not  doing  in  America,  and  there  are  some 
distinct  advances  over  German  practice  which  are 
now  standardized  commercial  practice  here. 

Wonderful  as  are  the  German  lenses,  composed  of 
glass  of  three  or  four  different  qualities  and  consist- 
encies, to  give  the  greatest  possible  light-gathering 
power,  they  have  seldom  been  produced  in  the  larger 
sizes  without  flaws  in  the  glass,  which,  the  German 
herr  professors  solemnly  assured  us,  did  not  really 
impair  the  excellence  of  the  lenses.  We  are  making 
the  largest  lenses  without  flaws,  and  find  they  work 
faster  than  those  with  flaws  in  them,  strange  as  that 
may  seem — to  the  Germans.  And  never  again  will 
America  and  the  rest  of  the  world  be  dependent  upon 
Germany  for  lenses;  that  chain  has  been  snapped 
forever ! 

America's  need  for  lenses  in  the  war  was  not  con- 
fined to  photographic  requirements;  for  range-finders 
for  our  artillery  and  for  the  navy,  for  field-glasses  and 
optical  instruments  of  every  sort,  the  discoveries  and 
inventions  developed  by  our  scientists  made  it  pos- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        85 

sible  to  provide  equipment  in  these  lines  without 
which  we  would  have  been  seriously  handicapped. 

Learning  how  to  make  lenses  was  only  one  step 
in  the  application  of  scientific  knowledge  and  methods 
of  photography  that 
was  such  an  impor- 
tant development  of 
the  war.  In  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war 
photographic  observ- 
ers could  fly  at  low 
altitudes;  before  hos- 
tilities ceased  it  was 
a  foolhardy  photog- 
rapher who  tried  to 
take  pictures  from 
less  than  a  mile  high, 
while  two  or  three 
miles  was  a  much 
safer  altitude.  This 
made  a  hand  camera 
useless,  and  huge  de- 
vices permanently 
attached  to  the  air- 
plane, equipped  with 
lenses  larger  than  had 
ever  been  used  for 
such  purposes,  had 
to  be  devised.  The 

ordinary  view-camera  has  a  "focal  length,"  or  dis- 
tance between  the  focal  center  of  the  lens  and  the 
plate,  of  from  seven  to  ten  or  twelve  inches;  lenses 
ordinarily  in  use  having  a  longer  focal  length  are 
small,  having  a  working  diameter  of  from  one-eighth 
to  one-fifteenth  of  the  focal  length,  requiring  long 


BIGGEST   OF   AERIAL   CAMERAS 

This  huge  apparatus,  with  a  ten-inch  lens  of 

fifty  inches  focus,  makes  clear  photographs  of 

people  on  the  ground  from  a  height  of  three 

miles  or  more. 


86        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

exposures.  But  before  the  armistice  was  signed  we 
had  made  in  this  country  perfect  lenses  having  a 
focal  length  of  fifty  inches  and  having  a  diameter  of 
ten  inches — what  photographers  term  "an  aperture 
of  F.  5." 

Equipped  with  a  camera  of  this  enormous  size, 
the  lens  protruding  through  the  bottom  of  the  fuselage 
of  his  airplane,  the  aerial  observer  can  fly  at  a  height 
of  three  miles  or  more  and  with  an  exposure  of  a 
five-hundredth  of  a  second,  or  even  less,  make  a 
picture  of  the  ground  beneath  so  full  of  detail  that  the 
trained  experts  at  the  laboratory  behind  his  own  lines 
can  detect  even  the  footprints  that  show  where  men 
had  marched  over  the  damp  earth  the  night  before. 
From  this  mechanical  eye  nothing  is  hidden;  even 
objects  that  the  airman  himself  cannot  see  are  brought 
out  in  full  detail  by  these  huge  lenses,  while  the  color 
values  that  make  it  possible  to  differentiate  even 
between  two  varieties  of  evergreen-trees  by  a  study 
of  photographs  taken  from  the  sky  are  accentuated 
by  two  other  remarkable  photographic  developments 
of  the  war,  the  pan-chromatic  plate  and  the  new 
ray-filter.  Heretofore  the  combination  of  high-speed 
photography  with  accurate  color  values  has  been  re- 
garded as  impossible;  it  is  literally  true  that  with 
the  new  "emulsion,"  as  the  chemical  coating  of  the 
negative  plate  is  called,  photographs  can  be  made 
under  light  conditions  heretofore  impossible,  at  speeds 
almost  as  high  as  were  formerly  possible  in  full  sun- 
light. And  instead  of  being  merely  solid  blacks  and 
whites,  as  is  usually  the  case  with  under-exposed 
pictures,  these  photographs  contain  a  wide  range  of 
gradations  that  make  the  distinction  between  objects 
of  the  same  shape  but  of  different  materials  so  easy 
as  to  be  almost  miraculous. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        87 

Proper  rendition  of  color  value  is  aided  by  ray- 
filters  devised  by  American  university  professors 
working  as  army  officers.  One  of  these  devices,  in 
addition,  enables  the  aviator  to  perform  the  marvelous 
trick  of  photographing  through  a  cloud  or  haze  that 


THE   AUTOMATIC   AERIAL   CAMERA 

The  photographer  is  telling  the  pilot,  over  the  wireless  interphone,  just  where  to 
fly  to  get  the  picture  he  wants. 

completely  obscures  his  vision  of  the  earth  and  getting 
a  picture  that  shows  the  details  of  the  surface. 
Through  a  haze  that  is  hardly  thick  enough  to  be 
called  cloud,  but  which  makes  ordinary  long-distance 
vision  impossible,  such  photographs  are  as  easy  as 
though  the  atmosphere  were  perfectly  clear;  through 
thin  clouds,  almost,  if  not  quite,  thick  enough  to 
hide  the  airmen  from  observers  on  the  ground,  photo- 
graphs have  also  been  made. 

Developing  negatives  and  making  prints  from  them 
was    formerly    a    comparatively    slow    process;    few 


88        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

photographers,  even  the  fast-working  professionals  of 
the  newspaper  staffs,  knew  any  tricks  that  would 
speed  up  the  process  to  an  elapsed  time  of  much  less 
than  twenty  minutes.  Through  purely  scientific 
methods,  devised  by  experts  who  had  never  had  prac- 
tical experience  in  high-speed  photographic  work,  but 
who  were  completely  equipped  chemists,  ways  have 
been  found  to  develop  the  negative  and  produce  not 
only  one,  but  a  number  of  finished  prints  in  less  than 
ten  minutes;  a  quarter  of  an  hour  after  the  aerial 
observer  has  landed,  expert  photograph-readers  are 
transferring  to  maps  the  new  data  which  his  photo- 
graphs reveal,  five  minutes  later  the  commanding 
officers  of  the  entire  sector  know  the  enemy's  latest 
movements  miles  behind  the  lines. 

More  than  one  hundred  thousand  prints  of  aerial 
photographs  had  to  be  turned  out  in  four  days  by 
the  aerial  photographic  force  of  the  Air  Service  during 
the  September,  1918,  offensive  west  of  Verdun  and 
in  the  Argonne  region.  The  aerial  negatives  had 
originally  been  made  by  French  squadrons  operating 
over  the  sector,  but  the  production  of  prints  on  the 
large  scale  necessary  had  been  left  to  the  American 
service.  As  the  offensive  was  in  the  nature  of  a  sur- 
prise, all  the  preparatory  work,  especially  the  bringing 
up  of  American  air  squadrons,  had  to  be  concealed 
up  to  the  last  minute. 

The  American  photographic  force  was  brought  to- 
gether and  traveled  all  night  to  headquarters,  arriving 
at  9  A.M.  By  ten  o'clock  a  laboratory  had  been  im- 
provised in  the  shed  of  a  brewery,  and  the  printing 
was  actually  in  progress.  During  the  first  night,  with 
most  limited  facilities,  3,000  prints  were  made,  and 
later  a  record  of  9,000  prints  in  sixteen  hours  for  a 
single  photographic  section  was  established. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        89 

During  the  offensive  the  advance  of  the  troops  was 
so  rapid  that  nearly  all  the  'planes  and  observers  were 
occupied  in  making  visual  observations  and  regulat- 
ing artillery  fire.  Aerial  photographs,  however,  were 


HOW   AERIAL   PHOTOGRAPHY   AIDS   THE   MAP-MAKER 

On  the  left  is  the  picture  ot  a  quartermaster's  depot  made  up  of  a  number  of  air- 
plane photos;  on  the  right,  the  topographical  drawing  made  from  these  data. 

made  by  the  American  forces  of  the  results  of  heavy 
artillery  fire,  and  proved  very  valuable.  A  photo- 
graphic mission  also  was  sent  out  along  the  Meuse 
to  ascertain  if  reports  were  correct  that  all  the 
bridges  were  down.  The  results  were  so  good  that 
the  exact  number  of  troops,  trucks,  and  even  machine- 
gun  companies  in  movement  at  that  hour  was  ascer- 
tained. 

The  development  of  the  aerial  camera  into  a  maga- 
zine carrying  fifty  plates  was  followed  by  an  auto- 
matic plate-changing  device  that  made  the  observer's 
task  the  mere  pressing  of  a  button.  On  America's 
entry  into  the  war  the  adaptation  of  the  flexible 
photographic  film  to  the  aerial  camera  began.  The 


90        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

film  is  America's  most  important  and  distinctive  con- 
tribution to  the  art  of  photography.  It  had  been  re- 
jected by  the  professional  photographer  because  of 
the  difficulty  in  making  it  lie  flat  and  the  way  it 
has  of  "fogging"  because  of  frictional  electrical 
discharges  as  it  is  rolled  from  one  spool  to  another 
in  very  cold  weather — -and  it  is  always  very  cold 
weather  at  three  miles  up  in  the  air! 

Again  science  overcame  obstacles.  Films  in  rolls 
twenty  inches  wide  and  containing  enough  for  one 
hundred  exposures  of  15x20  inches  are  made  to  lie 
flat  in  the  latest  American  aerial  camera  by  passing 
the  part  of  the  film  to  be  exposed  under  a  plate  pierced 
with  hundreds  of  tiny  holes  through  which  air  is  ex- 
hausted, thus  holding  the  film  flat  against  the  plate; 
the  suction  is  accomplished  by  means  of  a  Venturi 
tube  attached  to  the  frame  of  the  machine,  the  wind 
caused  by  the  machine's  motion  providing  sufficient 
pressure.  This  simple  and  efficacious  scheme  was 
the  invention  of  one  college  professor ;  another  worked 
out  the  scheme  for  preventing  electrical  fogging  by 
covering  every  metal  part  over  which  the  film  passes 
with  cloth,  the  threads  and  meshes  of  which  are  filled 
with  graphite,  reducing  friction  to  practically  nothing. 
This  same  camera  is  entirely  automatic  in  its  action. 
The  observer  needs  only  to  pull  a  trigger,  and  so  long 
as  he  holds  it  down  the  camera  will  take  one  photo- 
graph after  another  at  a  rate  dependent  upon  the 
speed  at  which  he  is  flying.  These  photographs, 
placed  edge  to  edge,  or  with  a  slight  overlap,  give  a 
perfect  map  of  the  terrain  traversed. 

With  the  combination  of  powerful  lenses  that  take 
in  every  detail  at  high  speed,  ray-filters  and  pan-chro- 
matic plates  that  distinguish  and  record  color  values, 
and  the  automatic  device  that  shifts  the  film  at  regu- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        91 

lar  intervals,  it  is  now  possible  to  make  in  a  few 
minutes  a  map  that  would  have  taken  surveyors 
years  to  make.  There  are  sections  of  the  United 
States,  many  of  them  huge  areas  like  the  desert  and 
mountain  country  of  the  Southwest,  that  have  never 
been  explored  nor  surveyed.  It  is  now  possible  to  map 
them  easily  and  with  mathematical  accuracy,  only 
a  moderate  amount  of  triangulation  to  determine 
relative  elevations  being  necessary.  Where  the  coun- 
try is  level  or  with  a  few  elevations  there  is  practically 
nothing  left  for  old-fashioned  surveying  methods  to 
accomplish. 

The  photographic  section  of  the  Air  Service  in  the 
autumn  of  1918  made  a  photographic  map  in  and 
around  Fort  Sill,  Oklahoma.  This  map  shows  not 
only  highways,  lanes,  trees,  buildings,  railroads, 
fences,  and  every  landmark,  but  indicates  every  ele- 
vation and  depression  in  the  terrain.  With  over 
four  thousand  separate  prints  pasted  into  one  huge 
mosaic,  the  finished  product  covers  a  space  16 
feet  long  and  6  feet  wide,  representing  a  ground 
area  of  310  square  miles.  The  map  takes  as  its 
center  point  the  town  of  Lawton,  which  lies  three 
miles  south  of  Post  Field,  extending  from  this  point 
east  and  west  three  and  five  miles,  respectively,  and 
from  the  northern  boundary  of  Fort  Sill  reservation, 
thirty-one  miles  south  to  a  point  below  the  town  of 
Walters. 

When  work  was  started  on  this  map,  the  territory 
was  plotted  out  on  a  ground  map,  and  by  figuring  the 
exact  area  possible  to  cover  with  three  magazines  of 
plates,  allowing  for  the  proper  overlaps,  zones  or 
strips  of  country  were  established  to  be  covered  on 
every  aerial  flight.  Observers  were  sent  up  with 
assignments  to  cover  specified  zones  or  strips,  and  as 


92        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

fast  as  the  finished  negatives  showed  that  these  strips 
had  been  covered  satisfactorily  the  work  proceeded 
to  unfinished  zones.  Three  'planes  went  up  daily 
at  the  start  and  negatives  were  produced  with  great 
rapidity.  More  than  4,200  separate  exposures  were 
made.  Approximately  sixty  trips,  averaging  an  hour 
and  a  half  per  trip,  were  necessary  to  produce  the  map, 
or  a  total  flying-time  of  ninety  hours. 

The  most  remarkable  photographic  map,  however, 
is  that  of  the  city  of  Washington,  D.  C.  This  map, 
composed  of  300  photographs  placed  together,  was 
made  in  two  hours  and  a  half;  it  has  been  calculated 
that  a  corps  of  one  hundred  surveyors  would  take 
five  years  to  do  the  same  piece  of  work,  and  the  re- 
sults would  not  be  so  accurate!  Every  bush  in  the 
parks  is  shown,  the  shape  of  every  building,  every 
alley  and  thoroughfare,  while  the  black  shadow  of 
the  Washington  Monument,  with  its  known  555  feet 
of  height,  gives  a  key  from  which  every  other  eleva- 
tion can  be  calculated  by  the  length  of  the  photo- 
graphed shadow. 

Here  is  a  contribution  to  peace-time  activities  and 
interests  of  vast  importance;  accurate,  detailed  maps 
of  cities,  such  as  can  be  made  in  this  manner  at  small 
expense,  now  cost  hundreds  of  dollars  a  copy ;  millions 
of  government  money  may  be  saved  by  using  this 
method  to  map  the  public  domain;  its  usefulness  in 
the  oil-fields,  in  surveying  timber-lands,  and  in  a 
thousand  ways  that  need  no  further  elaboration  is 
obvious. 

For  the  more  accurate  determination  of  elevations 
the  stereoscopic  principle  is  applied  to  aerial  photog- 
raphy. Every  one  is  familiar  with  the  stereoscope, 
the  device  that  enables  one  to  look  at  a  photograph — 
or,  rather,  two  photographs — through  simple  prism 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        93 

lenses  and,  instead  of  seeing  the  picture  in  a  flat 
plane,  get  the  effect  of  viewing  the  actual  object, 
which  appears  to  stand  out  in  relief.  This  is  accom- 
plished by  taking  two  photographs  simultaneously 
with  the  two  lenses  set  at  the  distance  from  each 


THE    MARLIN   AIRCRAFT   MACHINE-GUN 

This  weapon  is  fixed  to  the  fuselage,  so  the  pilot  has  to  aim  his  whole  machine. 

He  sights  through  the  telescope  with  rubber-padded  eye-piece,  attached  to  the 

left  of  the  gun.     By  a  hydraulic  transmission  from  the  engine,  the  gun  fires  at  the 

exact  instant  when  the  bullet  will  pass  between  the  whirling  propeller  blades. 


other  of  the  average  human  eyes — about  three  inches; 
by  means  of  the  prisms  the  two  pictures  are  seen  as 
one  and  the  effect  of  depth  results.  In  aerial  stereo- 
scopic photography  the  two  pictures  may  be  taken  a 
couple  of  miles  apart;  the  airman  sets  his  camera  at 
an  angle  and  makes  an  oblique  picture  as  he  ap- 
proaches his  object;  then  he  turns  and  photographs 
it  at  the  same  angle  from  the  opposite  side.  When  the 
two  pictures  are  viewed  together  the  precise  height 


94        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  every  elevation  and  the  depth  of  every  depression 
are  determined  accurately. 

To  send  an  aerial  observer  aloft  in  the  face  of  the 
enemy,  no  matter  how  perfect  his  airplane  and  his 
photographic  equipment,  without  providing  him  with 
weapons  of  attack  and  defense  and  training  him  in 
the  use  of  them,  would,  of  course,  be  merely  condemn- 
ing him  to  death  without  a  chance  for  his  life.  In 
addition  to  the  photographic  equipment,  therefore, 
each  of  our  observation- 'planes  has  four  machine- 
guns,  all  of  them  American  inventions.  The  two 
forward  guns  on  a  De  Havilland-4  are  Marlin  guns. 
These  are  fixed  guns;  that  is  to  say,  they  are  rigidly 
attached  to  the  airplane  so  that  they  can  be  aimed 
only  by  aiming  the  'plane  itself.  And  since  these  guns 
point  directly  forward  and  the  propeller  of  the  air- 
plane is  at  the  forward  end,  these  fixed  machine-guns 
can  be  fired  only  at  the  instant  when  neither  of  the 
blades  of  the  propeller  is  in  the  line  of  fire. 

There  has  been  no  more  marvelous,  yet  simple, 
combination  of  mechanical  devices  invented  for  war 
purposes  than  the  apparatus  and  method  of  firing 
fixed  machine-guns  from  an  airplane  automatically, 
and  so  synchronizing  their  discharge  with  the  revolu- 
tions of  the  propeller  that  the  bullets  will  never  hit 
the  propeller  blades,  but  always  pass  between  them. 
How  exacting  the  timing  must  be  to  accomplish  this 
result  must  be  obvious  when  one  considers  that  the 
propeller  shaft  on  a  De  Havilland  'plane  equipped 
with  the  Liberty  motor  revolves  at  the  rate  of  1,800 
revolutions  per  minute.  One  or  the  other  of  the  two 
propeller  blades,  therefore,  passes  in  front  of  the  gun 
sixty  times  a  second,  and  in  the  trifling  fraction  of 
time  between  the  passage  of  one  blade  and  that  of 
the  other  the  bullet  must  clear  the  space.  Otherwise, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 


95 


the  pilot  would  "shoot  up"  his  own    propeller  and 
come  crashing  to  earth. 

To  solve  the  problem  of  synchronizing  the  Marlin 
gun  required  the  most  careful  and  painstaking  cal- 
culations and  the  construction  of  apparatus  which 


THE    GUN   THAT   SHOOTS    BOTH   WAYS 

The  problem  of  using  weapons  larger  than  machine-guns  on  aircraft  is  how  to 
absorb  the  recoil  without  carrying  too  much  weight.  The  Davis  gun,  shown  in 
photograph,  fires  a  one-pound  naval  shell.  At  the  same  time  a  charge  of  fine 
birdshot  of  the  same  weight  is  fired  over  the  gunner's  shoulder,  through  the  other 
end  of  the  gun.  The  two  explosions  offset  each  other  and  the  airplane  is  not  even 
jarred. 

would,  under  all  circumstances,  be  absolutely  reliable 
and  at  the  same  time  add  as  little  as  possible  to  the 
weight  which  the  'plane  must  carry  in  the  air  and  be 
capable  of  adjustments  as  delicate  as  those  of  a  high- 
grade  watch.  Since  the  firing  of  these  fixed  guns 
must  always  depend  upon  the  rate  of  speed  of  the. 
propeller,  regardless  of  whether  the  plane  is  traveling 


96        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

fast  or  slowly,  the  trigger  mechanism  had  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  crank-shaft  of  the  engine.  No  merely 
mechanical  connection  would  answer,  for  even  the 
slightest  wear  in  a  bearing  or  the  infinitesimal  stretch- 
ing of  a  chain  or  wire  might  pull  the  trigger  prema- 
turely and  send  the  bullet  through  the  propeller  in- 
stead of  between  its  blades.  So  recourse  was  had  to 
what  is  known  to  engineers  as  the  most  efficient  and 
reliable  means  of  transmitting  power — the  hydraulic 
method.  Attached  to  the  main  shaft  of  the  engine 
is  a  tiny  rotary  oil-pump,  completely  inclosed,  open- 
ing only  into  a  metal  tube,  filled  with  oil,  which  leads 
to  the  trigger  mechanism  of  the  gun.  This  pump 
makes  a  stroke  at  every  revolution  of  the  shaft  and 
this  pump-stroke  is  communicated  through  the  oil 
in  the  tube  to  the  trigger  of  the  gun.  The  pilot  has 
under  his  control,  so  placed  that  he  can  operate  it 
with  either  his  hand  or  his  foot,  the  trigger  release, 
which  controls  the  firing  of  the  fixed  gun.  When 
this  trigger  release  is  pressed,  the  gun  automatically 
fires  continuously,  one  bullet  for  every  revolution  of 
the  propeller  shaft,  so  long  as  there  are  cartridges  in 
reserve.  When  the  pilot  relaxes  his  pressure  on  the 
trigger  release,  the  firing  ceases.  He  can  fire  one  shot 
or  a  "burst"  of  shots,  or  fire  continuously  up  to 
100  rounds,  which  is  the  capacity  of  a  single  belt  of 
cartridges. 

It  was  with  fixed  guns  of  this  sort,  synchronized  to 
fire  through  the  propellers,  that  most  of  the  great 
air  duels  of  the  war  were  fought.  For  single-seat  pur- 
suit-'planes,  this  type  of  gun  had  been  adopted  by  all 
of  the  Allies  in  the  last  year  of  the  war.  There  were 
many  delicate  mechanical  problems  besides  the  syn- 
chronizing involved  in  equipping  our  airplanes  with 
the  fixed  machine-guns.  To  find  a  way  of  discharging 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        97 

the  empty  shells  overside  without  hitting  the  pilot 
or  the  observer  in  the  after  cockpit  as  they  swept 
through  the  air  at  135  miles  an  hour  involved  careful 
study,  experiment,  and  calculation.  The  disintegrat- 
ing belt  for  feeding  the  cartridges  into  the  machine- 
gun  was  another  Yankee  device  that  proved  highly 


THE   LEWIS   AIRCRAFT   MACHINE-GUN 

This  weapon  is  used  by  the  observer  in  the  rear  cockpit  of  a  two-plane  machine. 

He  has  a  pair  of  them  and  both  can  be  fired  at  once.     The  cartridges  are  in  the 

circular  magazine;   the  bag  catches  the  empty  shells. 

efficient.  The  links  of  this  belt  are  so  hooked  together 
that  when  filled  with  cartridges,  one  cartridge  to  a 
link,  it  remains  a  continuous  belt  or  chain;  after  the 
cartridge  has  been  fed  into  the  gun,  however,  the 
link  is  automatically  disconnected  and  drops  out  of 
the  way,  so  that  there  are  no  unnecessary  coils  of 
chain  to  impede  the  pilot's  movements  and  interfere 
with  the  guiding  of  the  'plane. 

The  machine-gun  equipment  of  the  observer,  whose 
post  is  in  the  cockpit  behind  that  occupied  by  the 
pilot,  consists  of  two  Lewis  machine-guns.  This 


98        YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

weapon,  invented  by  Brig.-Gen.  Isaac  N.  Lewis,  U.S.A., 
is  the  only  machine-gun  that  does  not  require  a 
belt  or  web  of  cartridges.  The  Lewis  gun  magazine 
is  a  cylinder  revolving  horizontally  about  a  vertical 
axis.  Like  other  machine-guns,  the  cartridges  are 
loaded  into  the  barrel  and  fired  by  the  force  of  the 
recoil.  While  the  operator  keeps  his  finger  on  the 
trigger  the  gun  will  continue  to  load  and  fire  auto- 
matically so  long  as  there  are  cartridges  in  the  con- 
tainer. The  Lewis  gun,  which  had  been  adopted  be- 
fore we  went  into  the  war  by  the  United  States  navy 
and  the  British  army,  but  not  by  our  army,  had  a  con- 
tainer capacity  of  forty-seven  rounds.  For  aircraft  pur- 
poses this  container  and  the  gun  itself  were  redesigned, 
giving  it  a  capacity  of  ninety-seven  rounds.  By  an  in- 
genious method,  the  two  Lewis  guns  are  mounted  so  that 
the  observer  can  aim  either  or  both  of  them  at  will  in 
any  direction,  from  straight  up  to  almost  straight  down 
and  around  a  horizon  range  of  nearly  300  degrees. 
Both  guns  may  be  fired  with  a  single  trigger.  Both 
the  Lewis  aircraft  gun  and  the  Marlin  aircraft  gun 
had  to  be  provided  with  ammunition  of  special  type. 
The  ordinary  infantry  cartridge  is  not  enough  for 
aerial  fighting.  There  must  be  provided  armor- 
piercing  incendiary  bullets,  since  one  of  the  surest 
methods  of  bringing  down  the  enemy's  'plane  is  to 
pierce  his  gas-tank  and  set  the  contents  on  fire,  but 
also  so-called  "tracer"  bullets,  missiles  which  leave 
a  trail  of  smoke  behind  them  as  they  pass  through  the 
air,  thus  enabling  the  man  at  the  gun  to  observe  the 
accuracy  of  his  own  aim.  There  were  devised  methods 
of  loading  the  cartridge-belts  and  containers  for  air- 
craft machine-guns  so  that  at  fixed  intervals  between 
the  shots  of  ordinary  bullets  tracer  bullets  would  be 
fired,  and  at  other  fixed  intervals  the  armor-piercing 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        99 

incendiary  bullets.  And  there  is  a  basis  for  legitimate 
pride  in  the  achievement  of  the  Yankee  engineers 
and  manufacturers  who,  between  our  declaration  of 
war  and  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  had  perfected 
these  machine-guns  and  their  accessories  and  actually 


THE   BROWNING  AIRCRAFT   MACHINE   RIFLE 

One  or  two  machine-guns  are  mounted  on  the  flexible  mount  for  the  use  of  the 
observer  in  a  two-seated  'plane. 

manufactured  and  shipped  in  less  than  twelve  months 
30,000  of  the  Lewis  guns  and  25,000  of  the  Marlin 
fixed-type  machine-guns. 

Equipped  with  guns  of  such  flexibility,  precision, 
and  power,  a  pilot  and  observer  in  a  De  Havilland-4 
could  go  aloft  to  take  photographs  of  the  enemy's 
works  with  reasonable  security,  provided  they  had 
learned  how  to  shoot.  For  the  training  of  aviators  in 
the  use  of  the  machine-guns  of  both  types,  character- 
istically American  methods  were  devised  and  adopted. 


ioo      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

For  practice  in  accurate  aiming  at  moving  targets, 
the  popular  sport  of  clay-pigeon  shooting  was  adopted 
for  the  beginners  at  the  aviation  camps.  Miniature 
model  airplanes,  towed  through  the  air  at  the  end  of 
a  long  string  attached  to  the  'plane,  were  fired  at  with 
machine-guns  placed  on  top  of  elevated  towers.  But 
neither  of  these  methods  exactly  simulated  actual 
aerial  combat. 

It  would  obviously  be  wasteful  of  both  'planes  and 
aviators  to  have  the  men  in  training  actually  shooting 
at  each  other  in  the  air,  but  by  means  of  the  photo- 
graphic gun  a  way  was  found  in  which  all  the  condi- 
tions of  war  in  the  air,  except  the  actual  discharge  of 
bullets,  could  be  precisely  simulated,  and,  moreover, 
an  exact  record  of  the  results  of  each  student's  marks- 
manship be  made. 

The  first  gun-camera  was  used  by  British  aviators. 
Upon  our  entrance  into  the  war  the  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  at  whose  laboratories  in  Rochester  most 
of  the  war-time  advances  in  photograph  technic 
and  apparatus  were  perfected,  set  about  improving 
the  photo-gun.  The  British  model,  which  was  a  long, 
heavy,  cumbersome  device  that  had  to  be  especially 
mounted  in  the  'plane,  was  entirely  discarded.  In- 
stead there  was  devised  a  camera  that  could  be  fas- 
tened to  the  actual  Lewis  gun,  so  that  in  "shooting" 
with  it  the  aviator  was  handling  precisely  the  identical 
weapon  he  would  use  in  real  warfare. 

This  camera-gun  weighs  13  pounds  and  has  a  lens 
barrel  8  inches  long  and  2>£  inches  in  diameter.  The 
magazine  of  film  which  it  carries  is  designed  to  fit  in 
place  of  the  cartridge  magazine  on  the  Lewis  gun,  and 
contains  film  for  ioo  exposures.  Ordinary  motion- 
picture  film  is  used.  By  means  of  a  spring,  wound  up 
like  the  spring  of  a  phonograph  motor,  power  is  ob- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      101 

tained  for  actuating  the  film-moving  device  so  that  as 
long  as  the  operator  keeps  his  finger  on  the  trigger 
the  photo-gun  continues  to  "shoot,"  just  as  the 
machine-gun  continues  to  shoot  so  long  as  the  trigger 


SHOOTING  WITH  PHOTO-GUN 


A  STRIP  OF  PHOTOGRAPH  MADE  WITH  THE  PHOTO-GUN,  SHOWING  THE 
OPERATOR  HAD  "GOT  THE  DROP"  ON  THE  OTHER  'PLANE 


is  held  down.  The  same  sights  by  which  the  machine- 
gun  is  aimed  serve  for  aiming  the  photo-gun.  Equipped 
with  this  weapon,  the  airman  shoots  at  another 
machine  in  the  air  and  the  circular  photographs  on 
the  strip  of  film  show  exactly  the  position  of  the  other 


102      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

'plane  and  determine  at  once  whether  or  not  he  would 
have  hit  it  in  a  vital  spot  had  he  been  firing  bullets 
instead  of  taking  snapshots.  Later  there  was  added 
to  the  photo-gun  an  ingenious  timing  mechanism, 
consisting  of  a  split-second  stop-watch,  so  placed  that 
its  dial  was  reflected  into  the  camera,  so  that  every 
photograph  made  with  the  photo-gun  carried  also  a 
record  of  the  exact  fractional  part  of  a  second  of  time 
when  the  picture  was  made.  Two  student  aviators 
so  equipped,  sent  into  the  air  for  a  mock  aerial  duel, 
brought  back  photographic  records  which  showed 
exactly  which  one  "got  the  drop"  on  the  other,  and 
whether  one  would  have  been  disabled  in  actual  war- 
fare before  he  could  have  inflicted  vital  injuries  upon 
the  other. 

For  the  efficient  operation  of  airplanes  flying  at 
the  previously  unheard-of  heights  and  speeds  made 
necessary  by  war  conditions,  instruments  of  greater 
delicacy  and  perfection  than  had  ever  before  been 
made  in  quantities  had  to  be  devised  and  manufact- 
ured for  our  aerial  forces.  The  four  most  important 
items  of  information  which  the  pilot  must  have  con- 
stantly at  hand  are  his  altitude,  the  direction  in  which 
he  is  flying,  the  speed  at  which  his  'plane  is  traveling 
through  the  air,  and  the  number  of  revolutions  per 
minute  that  his  engine  is  making.  Each  of  these  re- 
quires a  separate  mechanism  and  a  separate  recording 
device  on  the  instrument  board  in  front  of  each  pilot 
and  observer.  The  air-speed  indicator  is  a  device  as 
delicate  as  a  watch.  By  means  of  a  Venturi  tube, 
through  which  the  air  passes,  an  indicator  is  moved 
on  a  dial  set  in  the  instrument  board:.  While  the  air- 
man has  no  means  of  determining  wind  velocity,  and 
therefore  cannot  calculate  his  speed  with  relation  to 
the  ground,  he  can  always  tell  exactly  how  fast  he 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      103 

is  traveling  with  relation  to  the  air;  thus,  if  his  air- 
speed indicator  registers  125  miles  an  hour,  and  he 
is  traveling  before  a  fifty-mile  wind,  he  is  actually 
going  175  miles  an  hour  with  relation  to  the  earth; 
if  he  is  flying  against  a  fifty-mile  wind,  he  is  actually 


HOW    AN    AIRPLANE    LOOKS    WHEN    SEEN   THROUGH    THE    SIGHTS   OF   A 
MACHINE-GUN 

covering  only  75  miles  of  distance  per  hour.  To  test 
these  air-speed  indicators  by  placing  each  one  of  the 
nearly  ten  thousand  which  we  turned  out  before  the 
war  ended  upon  an  airplane  would  have  involved 
an  immense  number  of  experimental  flights.  Recourse 
was  had  to  the  wind-tunnel,  the  ingenious  device  in- 
vented by  the  late  Wilbur  Wright,  and  perfected  under 
the  direction  of  Glenn  H.  Curtiss.  Originally  designed 
for  testing  airplane  models,  this  wind-tunnel,  in  which 
an  air  velocity  as  high  as  200  miles  an  hour  can  be 


io4      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

obtained,  served  admirably  for  the  calibrating  of  the 
air-speed  indicators. 

How  the  General  Electric  Company  in  eight  weeks 
from  the  beginning  of  operations  was  producing  250 
airplane  compasses  a  week  and  made  more  than  1 1,000 
in  the  few  months;  how  the  tiny  chains  for  21,000 
aneroid  barometers  which  serve  as  altimeters  for  de- 
termining the  height  above  ground  by  means  of  air 
pressure  were  obtained  from  Switzerland;  how  the 
National  Cash  Register  Company  developed  the 
tachometer,  the  device  that  records  the  engine  speed, 
and  made  21,000  of  these  devices — about  each  one 
of  these  remarkable  industrial  achievements  a  whole 
chapter  might  be  written.  Then  for  each  'plane  there 
had  to  be  provided  two  clocks,  a  radiator  thermometer, 
and  a  fire-extinguisher,  oil-pressure  and  air-pressure 
gages  for  the  oil-  and  gasolene-tanks;  the  problem 
was  not  only  how  to  make  and  produce  these  devices 
in  quantities,  but  even  the  manufacture  of  the  self- 
luminous  radium  dials  for  all  of  these  instruments, 
making  it  possible  for  the  airman  to  fly  at  night, 
involved  difficulties  that  only  the  utmost  resourceful- 
ness was  able  to  overcome. 

And  still  the  equipment  of  the  military  airplane 
was  incomplete.  Flying  at  terrific  altitudes,  some- 
times for  hours  at  a  time  at  a  height  of  between  three 
and  four  miles,  airmen  are  exposed,  even  in  mid- 
summer, to  temperatures  below  the  zero  mark,  and  at 
the  same  time  are  required  to  exert  themselves  in  an 
atmosphere  so  rarefied  as  to  make  breathing  difficult. 
Anybody  who  has  ever  crossed  the  Great  Divide 
knows  what  it  means  to  climb  in  a  day  from  the 
altitude  of  the  plains,  perhaps  six  or  seven  hundred 
feet  above  sea-level,  to  that  of  Denver  or  the  higher 
passes  farther  west,  from  a  mile  to  a  mile  and  a  half 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      105 

high.  Few  persons  cross  the  Rocky  Mountains  with- 
out experiencing  difficulty  in  breathing,  even  though 
the  ascent  has  been  slow  and  gradual.  To  climb  in 
an  hour  from  the  earth  to  a  height  of  three  miles 
subjects  the  airman  to  strains  which  few  endure  for 
a  long  period  successfully.  Many  of  the  fatalities  in 
the  early  days  of  the  war  are  now  attributed  to  dizzi- 
ness and  loss  of  control  caused  by  the  lack  of  oxygen 
in  the  air  at  these  high  altitudes,  and  one  of  the  most 
important  contributions  of  America  to  the  whole 
aviation  problem  was  the  development  and  perfec- 
tion, under  the  direction  of  Brig.-Gen.  T.  C.  Lyster, 
of  the  medical  section  of  the  Department  of  Military 
Aeronautics,  of  apparatus  to  insure  a  sufficient  supply 
of  oxygen  to  aviators  at  whatever  altitude  that  they 
might  fly. 

The  great  necessity  of  efficiently  maintaining  fliers 
was  demonstrated  by  a  study  of  the  English  air  casu- 
alties during  the  first  year  of  the  war.  This  study 
indicated  that  2  per  cent,  of  casualties  were  due  to 
the  Hun,  8  per  cent,  to  the  'plane,  and  90  per 
cent,  to  the  men;  these  proportions  clearly  indicated 
that  something  was  radically  wrong  with  the  person- 
nel. A  thorough  study  of  this  situation  disclosed 
the  fact  that  practically  all  of  the  flying  personnel 
was  suffering  from  what  was  known  as  oxygen  fatigue. 

To  design  an  oxygen  equipment  which  would  be 
entirely  automatic,  one  that  would  be  reliable  and 
efficient,  necessitated  the  building  of  a  device  which 
embodied  several  instruments  and  one  that  would 
overcome  many  variable  conditions.  It  was  necessary 
to  have  a  device  that  would  work  under  variable 
tank  pressures,  from  100  pounds  to  250  pounds  per 
square  inch,  with  a  temperature  of  from  70  to  80 
degrees  Fahrenheit  to  20  or  30  degrees  below  zero. 


io6      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

To  overcome  these  variables  necessitated  a  thorough 
study  of  temperature  and  pressure  effects  upon  metals, 
and  considerable  experiment.  In  addition,  the  ap- 
paratus must  deliver  the  required  quantity  to  either 
one  or  two  men  at  every  altitude  from  3,000  to  30,000 
feet. 

Both  the  British  and  French  had  been  experiment- 
ing with  oxygen  apparatus  for  aviators  before  the 
United  States  entered  the  wan  An  original  model 
of  the  French  apparatus  was  brought  to  this  country. 
On  inspection,  it  proved  to  be  a  hand-made  device, 
each  part  having  been  carefully  fitted  by  an  individual 
workman.  We  had  neither  the  skilled  mechanics  for 
this  sort  of  work  nor  the  time  in  which  to  make  the 
large  quantity  of  this  equipment  required  for  our  air 
forces.  The  development  and  engineering  of  an 
oxygen  apparatus  to  meet  American  requirements 
and  to  be  manufactured  by  American  methods  were 
undertaken. 

The  entire  apparatus  had  to  be  redesigned,  to  take 
care  of  two  men  instead  of  one,  to  reduce  the  weight, 
to  meet  American  methods  of  manufacture,  and  to 
make  the  apparatus  more  efficient  and  reliable.  This 
work  was  started  about  the  ist  of  January,  1918. 
On  May  3,  1918,  six  complete  equipments,  including 
apparatus,  tanks,  masks,  etc.,  were  sent  overseas  by 
special  messenger  to  be  actually  tried  out  on  the 
front.  On  May  3ist  the  first  production  shipment  of 
200  sets  of  apparatus  was  made.  By  November  more 
than  5,000  sets  of  apparatus  had  been  manufactured 
and  accepted  by  the  government,  more  than  3,600 
had  been  shipped  to  ports  of  embarkation,  and  more 
than  2,300  had  been  floated  overseas,  this  production 
ranging  from  a  rate  of  about  400  per  month  in  May 
to  1,000  per  month  in  October. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       107 

The  importance  of  oxygen  equipment  necessitated 
the  establishment  overseas  of  a  special  oxygen  equip- 
ment division,  to  take  care  of  the  application  of  these 
equipments  to  'planes.  All  military  'planes  flying  above 
an  altitude  of  10,000  feet  are  equipped  for  the  appli- 
cation of  oxygen  equipment. 

The  intense  cold  at  the  high  altitudes  was  a  prob- 
lem that  had  to  be  solved  in  a  different  way.  Fortu- 
nately we  had  in  America  developed  a  considerable 
industry  in  the  manufacture  of  electrically  heated 
pads,  blankets,  etc.,  for  the  use  of  invalids,  and  by 
a  simple  adaptation  of  the  same  manufacturing 
methods  we  were  able  to  provide  electrically  heated 
garments  for  the  use  of  airmen.  The  production  of 
these  was  just  beginning  at  the  signing  of  the  armis- 
tice. A  considerable  number  of  these  suits  had  been 
made,  and  they  are  now  standard  equipment  for  all 
American  military  aviators  flying  at  high  altitudes. 
To  avoid  reducing  engine-power  an  ingenious  device 
consisting  of  a  tiny  electric  generator  operated  by  a 
little  windmill  attached  to  the  frame  of  the  machine 
is  used  to  generate  the  current  for  these  electrically 
warmed  garments,  and  also  for  warming  devices  to 
prevent  the  mechanism  of  the  machine-guns  from  jam- 
ming, due  to  the  stiffening  of  the  oil  at  low  tem- 
peratures. 

For  signaling  purposes,  every  military  airplane 
had  to  be  equipped,  in  addition  to  its  navigation 
lights,  red,  white,  and  green,  arranged  as  they  are 
on  a  ship,  with  rockets  of  different  colors  which  could 
be  fired  from  a  specially  made  pistol  having  a  bore 
of  about  an  inch  and  a  half,  and  with  smoke-rockets 
for  daylight  signaling;  another  part  of  the  equipment 
is  the  parachute-flare,  used  for  night  landings.  As  the 
airman  approaches  the  earth,  a  little  parachute  is . 


io8      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

dropped  over  the  side.  It  opens  and  floats  gently 
earthward.  A  powerful  magnesium  light  which  illumi- 
nates the  earth  in  a  wide  circle  is  suspended  from  the 
parachute,  enabling  the  pilot  to  make  a  landing  almost 
as  readily  at  night  as  by  day.  The  same  bluish  flares 
are  used  to  light  the  target  in  night  bombing.  Neither 
of  these  devices  is  an  American  invention,  but  the 
ingenuity  and  resourcefulness  required  to  find  means 
of  producing  them  in  large  quantities  under  pressure 
was  a  distinct  American  triumph. 

While  the  army  was  working  out  these  devices,  the 
navy  was  developing  airplane  appliances  and  equip- 
ment designed  to  render  the  navigation  of  seaplanes 
and  flying-boats  easier  and  safer  when  out  of  sight 
of  land.  Three  radically  new  and  immensely  valu- 
able devices  were  developed  before  the  termination 
of  the  war,  the  application  of  all  of  which  to  peace- 
time air  navigation  is  of  incalculable  importance. 
These  are  the  aerial  sextant,  the  drift  indicator,  and 
the  course-and-distance  indicator. 

In  the  aerial  sextant,  known  as  the  Byrd  sextant, 
invented  by  Lieut. -Com.  H.  L.  Byrd,  a  bubble  in  a 
tube  takes  the  place  of  the  sea  horizon  for  observa- 
tions. A  specially  constructed  lens  is  used  in  sighting 
the  bubble,  which  is  reflected  in  a  mirror.  The  sun 
is  reflected  in  another  mirror.  The  observer  brings 
the  sun  tangent  to  a  line  at  the  same  time  he  brings 
the  bubble  tangent  to  the  line.  That  gives  the  alti- 
tude of  the  sun.  This  is  of  especial  value,  as  the  avi- 
ator is  often  above  the  clouds,  and  even  when  flying  at 
low  altitudes  the  horizon  is  too  dim  to  be  seen  clearly. 
With  this  new  aerial  sextant  the  curvature  of  the  earth 
does  not  have  to  be  taken  into  consideration  in  cal- 
culating position.  The  bubble  is  lighted  at  night,  so 
that  night  observations  of  the  stars  may  be  taken. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       109 

New  methods  of  astronomical  calculations  have 
been  devised  which  enable  the  navigator  to  make 
his  calculations  in  a  fifth  of  the  time  that  was  for- 
merly necessary.  A  projection-chart  of  the  Atlantic 


THE  INSTRUMENT  BOARD  OF  A  NAVY  SEAPLANE 

The  pilot  must  understand  and  constantly  consult  this  array  of  instruments, 
which  tell  him  how  many  revolutions  per  minute  his  propeller  is  making,  his  speed 
relative  to  the  wind,  whether  or  not  he  is  on  an  even  keel,  his  altitude,  the  tempera- 
ture and  barometer  pressure,  the  point  of  the  compass  toward  which  he  is  heading, 
the  air  pressure  in  his  petrol-tank,  the  amount  of  gas  and  oil  still  available,  and 
the  temperature  of  his  radiator  water.  The  instruments  not  illuminated  by 
electric  lights  have  radium-coated  figures  making  them  luminous  for  night  use. 

Ocean  has  been  specially  constructed  for  this  purpose. 
This  chart — a  new  invention — does  away  with  diffi- 
cult mathematical  calculations,  enabling  the  aviator 
to  determine  his  position  in  a  few  minutes. 

Another  great  problem  of  the  sea-air  navigator  is 
the  calculation  of  the  speed  and  direction  of  the  wind, 
both  day  and  night.  The  compass  can  only  give  the 
course  upon  which  the  craft  heads,  and  in  determining 


no   YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  true  course  proper  allowance  must  be  made  for 
the  sidewise  drift  caused  by  the  wind.  For  example, 
a  wind  blowing  thirty  miles  an  hour  toward  the  side 
of  the  'plane  will  blow  it  thirty  miles  an  hour  out  of 
its  course.  This  fact  alone  makes  the  navigation  of 
the  air  far  more  difficult  than  the  navigation  of  the  sea. 

To  overcome  this  difficulty  bombs  have  been  in- 
vented which  ignite  upon  striking  the  surface  of  the 
water  and  give  a  dense  smoke  and  bright  light  for 
ten  minutes.  An  instrument  is  used  in  conjunction 
with  this  bomb  which  enables  the  navigator  to  de- 
termine the  velocity  and  direction  of  the  wind  by 
sighting  on  the  smoke  in  the  daytime  and  on  the 
light  at  night.  This  instrument,  called  the  speed-and- 
drift  indicator,  has  proved  successful. 

When  the  navigator  has  found  the  speed  and  direc- 
tion of  the  wind,  he  must  then  be  able  to  calculate 
the  course  to  steer  to  allow  for  this  wind.  To  do  this 
an  instrument  has  been  designed  to  solve  the  triangle 
of  forces,  thus  doing  away  with  cumbersome  mathe- 
matical calculations. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  of  all  new  inventions 
in  aviation  equipment,  the  radio  telephone,  is  dis- 
tinctly a  product  of  Yankee  ingenuity.  Every  Amer- 
ican service-'plane  built  after  we  went  into  the  war 
was  equipped  with  one  or  another  form  of  radio- 
telephone apparatus.  The  stories  of  this  marvelous 
invention  and  of  the  radio  compass  are  told  in  another 
chapter. 


VI 

THE    CHEMICAL    CONQUEST    OF    THE    AIR 

ONE  of  the  inspired  writers  of  the  Old  Testament 
poetically  refers  to  Satan  as  "Prince  of  the 
Powers  of  the  Air."  To  those  who  look  upon  the 
war  just  ended  as  that  Armageddon  foretold  in  Holy 
Writ,  the  final  earthly  clash  between  good  and  evil, 
it  is  of  more  than  passing  interest  to  note  that  when 
Germany  precipitated  the  conflict,  in  1914,  the  Kaiser 
could  rightfully,  in  more  senses  than  one,  boast  him- 
self "Prince  of  the  Powers  of  the  Air." 

Not  only  was  Germany  the  only  nation  that  had 
developed  the  airplane  into  an  effective  military 
weapon  and  built  dirigibles  capable  of  extensive 
aerial  navigation;  it  was  the  only  country  in  the  world 
that  had  at  its  command  the  power  of  extracting 
from  the  very  air  itself  the  one  essential  element 
without  which  modern  warfare  could  not  be  waged, 
nitrogen.  And  it  was  not  until  Germany  had  per- 
fected processes  for  the  fixation  of  atmospheric  nitro- 
gen and  accumulated  a  huge  supply  of  nitrates  and 
nitric  acid  that  the  wheels  were  set  in  motion  for  the 
campaign  of  world  conquest  of  which  the  Prussian 
had  so  long  dreamed. 

Nitrogen  is  the  basis  of  all  explosives.  The  com- 
monest of  all  the  elements,  perhaps,  constituting  four- 
fifths  of  the  air  we  breathe,  it  is  difficult  to  trap  and 


ii2      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

almost  impossible  to  hold  in  confinement  when  com- 
bined in  the  proportions  that  make  explosives.  It 
is,  moreover,  the  one  indispensable  fertilizing  element 
without  which  there  could  be  no  plant  growth  and 
for  the  lack  of  which  the  whole  world  would  speedily 
starve  were  there  not  available  means  of  restoring 
nitrogen  to  the  soil.  Until  Germany  developed  proc- 
esses of  taking  nitrogen  from  the  air  and  combining 
it  with  other  elements,  either  as  ammonia  or  nitric 
acid,  the  world  relied  almost  entirely  for  its  supply 
of  nitrates,  for  war  or  for  peace,  on  the  saltpeter  beds 
of  Chile,  the  one  known  great  natural  deposit  of 
nitrogen  salts. 

Germany  knew  that  a  general  European  war  would 
result  in  a  blockade  that  would  cut  her  off  from  the 
Chile  nitrates,  and  she  would  not  have  dared  to  go  to 
war  without  some  means  of  supplying  the  need.  The 
sending  of  Admiral  von  Spec's  squadron  to  operate 
against  commerce  in  South-American  waters  was 
Germany's  attempt  to  cut  off  the  Allies  from  the 
Chile  nitrate  supply.  Every  merchant-ship  sunk  by 
a  submarine  reduced  by  that  much  the  tonnage 
available  to  bring  nitrates  to  America  and  the  Euro- 
pean Allies. 

No  single  item  of  America's  war  program  was  as 
audacious  in  its  conception  as  the  preparations  which 
the  War  Department  began  immediately  upon  our 
entrance  into  the  war  for  the  immediate  development, 
on  a  scale  surpassing  even  Germany's  ambitious 
undertaking,  of  processes  and  plants  for  the  extrac- 
tion of  nitrogen  from  the  air.  Nothing  more  forcibly 
demonstrated  the  confidence  in  and  reliance  upon  the 
resourcefulness  and  ability  of  American  scientists 
than  the  government's  decision  to  beat  Germany  at 
her  own  game.  None  of  the  nation's  undertakings 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       113 

for  the  prosecution  of  the  war  has  left  the  country 
such  a  valuable  heritage  in  the  shape  of  tangible, 
material  additions  to  our  national  wealth. 

How  important  nitrogen  is  in  the  composition  of 
munitions  is  apparent  if  one  considers  for  a  moment 
what  the  various  explosives  are  made  of.  Ordinary 
black  powder  is  a  mixture  of  charcoal,  sulphur,  and 
saltpeter,  saltpeter  being  nitrate  of  sodium.  Gun- 
cotton  is  nitrocellulose.  Smokeless  powder  is  also 
a  nitrocellulose  compound.  Dynamite  is  nitro- 
glycerin  mixed  with  an  inert  substance  to  form  a 
solid  mass.  TNT  is  tri-nitro-toluol ;  TNX  is  tri- 
nitro-xyol.  The  explosive  charge  used  in  grenades 
for  trench  warfare  is  ammonium  nitrate.  Picric  acid, 
the  base  of  the  British  lyddite,  the  French  melinite, 
and  the  Japanese  shimose,  is  the  result  of  the  treat- 
ment of  carbolic  acid  with  nitric  acid.  And  in  all  of 
these  the  nitrogen  element  is  the  one  essential  to  their 
explosive  qualities. 

The  extraction  of  nitrogen  from  the  air  as  a  labora- 
tory experiment  was  well  known  to  all  chemists.  There 
was  not  in  the  United  States  a  single  plant  for  doing 
this  commercially.  In  Canada,  at  Niagara  Falls, 
there  was  one  company  engaged  in  the  work,  using  a 
process  that  was  different  from  that  upon  which 
Germany  mainly  relied.  An  American  company 
owned  the  rights  to  the  principal  German  process 
and  had  devised  some  modifications.  A  dozen  chem- 
ists of  national  repute  had  proposed  other  methods, 
none  of  them  beyond  the  laboratory  stage,  and  there 
were  the  patents  in  our  Patent  Office  of  the  German 
process. 

With  this  inadequate  equipment  the  War  Depart- 
ment began  the  construction  at  Sheffield,  Alabama, 
of  a  gigantic  plant  for  the  fixation  of  atmospheric 


n4      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

nitrogen,  while  a  technical  board  of  experts  was  ap- 
pointed to  determine  the  process  to  be  used.  Sheffield 
was  selected  because  there  were  some  factory  build- 
ings already  available  there  and  because  it  is  close 
to  Mussel  Shoals,  where  the  government  had  begun 
the  development  of  a  huge  water-power  project.  All 
nitrogen-fixation  processes  depend  upon  the  avail- 
ability of  large  amounts  of  electric  current,  the  de- 
composition of  the  air  being  accomplished  by  passing 
it  through  an  electric  arc,  or  by  some  other  means 
subjecting  it  to  a  temperature  of  from  3,000  to  6,000 
degrees.  On  the  technical  board  were  representa- 
tives of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  as  well  as  of 
the  army  and  navy,  since  the  plant  is  to  be  used  for 
the  production  of  nitrates  for  fertilizer  when  the 
military  necessity  for  its  operation  no  longer  exists. 

First  $30,000,000,  then  another  $30,000,000,  and 
at  last  much  more  than  $100,000,000  was  made  avail- 
able for  the  nitrate  plants,  the  one  at  Sheffield  and 
four  others  in  different  parts  of  the  country.  There 
was  no  time  to  wait  for  the  development  of  water- 
power;  great  steam-engines  were  installed  to  produce 
the  enormous  volume  of  high- voltage  electric  current 
needed  for  any  of  the  processes.  And  while  the  nec- 
essary machinery  for  a  limited  production  of  nitrogen 
products  by  the  Canadian  process  was  being  as- 
sembled, and  other  machinery  was  being  built  with 
which  to  produce  more  nitrogen  from  the  air  by  the 
American-owned  modified  German  process,  one  group 
of  scientific  and  technical  men  was  wrestling  with  the 
American  patents  on  the  original  German  process, 
which  was  known  to  require  much  less  power  per  unit 
of  production  than  any  of  the  other  known  methods 
of  inducing  nitrogen  to  separate  itself  from  the  oxy- 
gen of  the  air  and  combine  with  soda  or  other  common 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       115 

bases.  Another  group  of  scientists  was  examining  the 
experiments  of  the  dozen  or  more  American  chemists 
who  had  worked  out  nitrate-fixation  processes  in  their 
laboratories. 

The  story  of  the  unraveling  of  the  German  method 
of  making  artificial  nitrates,  through  the  most  patient 
experimenting,  lasting  more  than  a  year,  with  the 
patents  taken  out  in  America  by  the  German  chemical 
trust,  is  only  one  of  scores  of  similar  tales  that  some 
day  will  make  a  book  as  fascinating  as  any  detective 
story  of  fiction.  Under  the  patent  laws  of  the  United 
States,  the  purpose  of  which  is  to  give  to  inventors 
a  monopoly  limited  to  a  brief  term  of  years  and  then 
to  throw  their  inventions  open  to  public  use,  drawings 
and  specifications  filed  with  the  patent  application 
must  be  so  explicit  that,  as  the  law  reads,  "those 
skilled  in  the  art  may  reproduce  the  device  or  process  " 
by  a  mere  examination  of  the  papers.  Study  of  this 
and  other  patents  taken  out  by  Germans  in  America, 
all  of  which  were  thrown  open  to  the  use  of  Americans 
when  Germany  and  the  United  Staces  went  to  war, 
proves  that  for  many  years  German  inventors  and 
scientists  have  been  practising  deliberate  deception 
in  their  American  patent  applications.  The  general 
principles  involved  were  stated,  it  is  true,  but  the 
detailed  instructions  were  unintelligible,  even  to 
"those  skilled  in  the  art." 

An  expert  chemist  of  the  Bureau  of  Chemistry,  an 
electrical  engineer  of  national  reputation  and  a  prac- 
tical electrician  from  the  Washington  Navy  Yard, 
a  man  with  twenty  years  of  electrical  experience 
behind  him,  tackled  the  problem.  The  working  of  the 
process  called  for  a  pressure  of  1,500  pounds  to  the 
square  inch  inside  of  a  tightly  sealed  cylinder  heated 
to  1,170  degrees  Centigrade.  It  was  easy  enough  to 


n6   YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

get  the  pressure,  easy  enough  to  get  the  temperature ; 
how  the  two  could  be  achieved  at  once  was  the  puzzle. 
The  drawings  accompanying  the  patent  specifications 
showed  an  electric  wire  running  to  the  outside  of  the 
cylinder  and  ending  there !  The  three  experts  took  this 
clue  as  their  starting-point.  After  nine  months  they 
had  discovered  the  secret  in  principle.  They  built  a 
small-sized  plant,  and  the  electric- wiring  burned  out. 
The  navy  yard  electrician  found  a  way  to  overcome 
that ;  now  the  government  has,  in  addition  to  its  other 
processes,  an  actual  working  plant  producing  nitrogen 
from  the  air  by  the  economical  German  method. 

While  this  untangling  of  German  trickery  was  going 
on  still  another  process,  all  American  and  differing 
in  many  important  respects  from  anything  that  had 
been  done  before,  was  developed  at  the  expense  of 
the  government  from  the  laboratory  experiments  of 
its  inventor,  Prof.  John  E.  Bucher,  of  Brown  Univer- 
sity. Professor  Bucher's  method  of  nitrogen  fixation 
is  simplicity  itself.  It  does  not  require  an  expensive 
electric  installation,  and  it  produces  not  only  the 
essential  nitrogen  compounds,  but  many  valuable  by- 
products. 

By  the  Bucher  process,  soda  ash  and  powdered 
coke  are  mixed  with  powdered  iron  or  with  iron  ore — 
either  will  do — and  heated  in  an  ordinary  furnace 
through  which  air  is  passed.  The  result  is  cyanide 
of  soda,  with  the  iron  uncombined,  it  having  acted, 
as  Professor  Bucher  phrases  it,  "as  a  chemical  parson 
to  unite  the  nitrogen  of  the  air  with  the  soda  and  the 
coke."  This  mysterious  but  effective  chemical  proc- 
ess, by  which  the  mere  presence  of  a  substance  that 
does  not  in  any  way  enter  into  the  combination  is 
nevertheless  essential  to  the  formation  of  the  com- 
bination, known  to  chemists  as  "catalysis,"  forms  an 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       117 

important  part  of  most  of  the  processes  for  fixing 
atmospheric  nitrogen  and  converting  the  derived 
products  into  other  chemical  forms. 

The  cyanamide  process,  the  first  method  adopted 
by  the  government,  is  based  upon  the  fact  that  cal- 
cium carbide  may  be  induced  with  comparative  ease, 
at  a  temperature  of  2,000°  F.,  to  absorb  nitrogen 
which  has  been  liberated  from  liquid  air.  When  the 
liquid  air  begins  to  rise  above  its  normal  temperature 
of  —380°  F.,  pure  nitrogen  boils  off.  This  is  pumped 
to  the  electric  ovens  and  absorbed  by  the  carbide, 
leaving  the  oxygen  of  the  air  as  a  by-product.  The 
compound  of  calcium  carbide  and  nitrogen,  known 
commercially  as  cyanamide,  is  itself  valuable  as  a 
fertilizer,  and  by  treatment  with  superheated  steam 
its  nitrogen  may  be  released  to  enter  into  combination 
with  the  hydrogen  of  the  steam,  forming  ammonia. 
This  is  the  process  invented  by  Doctors  Frank  and 
Caro,  and  developed  by  the  German  electrical  trust. 
From  400,000  to  600,000  tons  of  cyanamide  are  now 
being  produced  annually  in  Germany. 

Through  the  development  and  application  of  these 
various  processes  for  obtaining  nitrogen  from  the  air, 
coupled  with  the  speeding  up  of  nitrate  importations 
from  Chile,  the  United  States  was  not  only  able  to 
produce  gunpowder  and  high  explosives  faster  than 
we  ourselves  and  the  European  Allies  could  use  them 
up,  even  in  the  most  intense  period  of  the  war,  but 
we  have  now  available  a  permanent  source  of  nitrogen 
supply  of  the  highest  possible  value  and  importance 
to  agriculture,  and  as  a  reserve  for  munitions  against 
future  wars,  and  there  have  been  established,  as  part 
of  the  necessary  work  in  the  manufacture  of  explosives, 
industries  which  can  produce  and  are  producing  the 
materials  for  the  manufacture  of  dyestuffs  and  a 


n8      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

thousand  other  chemical  products  for  which  the  world 
formerly  depended  upon  Germany,  but  which  America 
can  now  supply  to  all  comers. 

Every  one  of  the  processes  with  which  our  govern- 
ment is  working  gives  as  its  final  product,  not  nitric 
acid,  which  is  the  form  in  which  nitrogen  is  required 
for  explosives,  but  ammonia,  which  is  the  nitrogen 
product  most  easily  adaptable  to  fertilizing  purposes. 
The  conversion  of  ammonia  to  nitric  acid  is  simple 
enough  as  a  laboratory  experiment,  but  to  do  it  on  a 
commercial  scale  is  quite  a  different  matter.  So,  too, 
nitric  acid  is  of  comparatively  little  value  as  a  basis 
for  fertilizer,  because  of  the  expensive  manipulations 
necessary  to  make  it  usable.  There  is  a  process  of 
nitrogen  fixation  that  gives  nitric  acid  as  its  finished 
product — the  electric-arc  method  of  decomposing  air 
by  passing  it  through  an  enormous  flaming  arc,  best 
known  through  the  Birkeland-Eyde  plants  in  Norway. 
This  process,  which  involves  temperatures  up  to  6,000° 
F.  at  a  power-cost  quite  prohibitive  except  in 
Norway,  has  been  the  best  advertised  of  all  the  air- 
nitrogen  methods.  The  wide  publicity  given  to  these 
Norway  plants,  always  coupled  with  the  perfectly 
truthful  assertion  that  the  process  could  not  be 
economically  operated  elsewhere,  now  appears  to  have 
been  due  to  a  definite  German  propaganda  having 
for  its  double  purpose  the  discouragement  of  nitrogen- 
fixation  attempts  in  other  countries  and  the  diversion 
of  attention  from  the  military  value  of  the  Haber  and 
cyanamide  processes.  For  since  the  European  war 
began  it  has  been  disclosed  that  these  Norwegian 
plants,  even  at  three  dollars  a  year  per  horse-power, 
had  never  been  commercially  self-supporting,  but  had 
from  the  beginning  been  subsidized  by  Germany, 
which  was  thus  enabled  to  accumulate  a  huge  store 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       119 

of  nitric  acid  for  munitions  while  ostensibly  giving  all 
of  its  attention  to  the  development  of  fertilizer  re- 
sources by  other  processes.  But  these  other  processes, 
cyanamide,  the  Haber  process,  and  the  methods  of 
producing  by-product  ammonia,  are  now  known  to 
the  rest  of  the  world,  as  they  have  long  been  known 
to  Germany,  to  be  equally  available  for  the  production 
of  nitric  acid.  The  simple  method  that  produces  this 
result  is  the  invention  of  Prof.  Wilhelm  Ostwald. 
Pass  a  mixture  of  ammonia  and  air  through  a  heated 
chamber,  at  the  end  of  which  is  a  platinum  screen, 
serving  as  a  catalyst,  and,  presto!  the  oxygen  of  the 
air  replaces  the  hydrogen  of  the  ammonia  and  we  have 
nitric  acid. 

This  bit  of  chemical  wizardry  was  duly  patented  in 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  with  the  cus- 
tomary German  camouflage.  British  chemical  ex- 
perts found  out  how  to  do  it,  and  now  Great  Britain 
and  France  are  each  producing  something  like  200,000 
tons  of  nitric  acid  from  atmospheric  nitrogen  annually, 
mainly  by  the  medium  of  the  cyanamide  process,  to 
supplement  their  supplies  of  Chile  nitrates  and  their 
imports  of  explosives  from  America.  And  that  is 
what  our  government  is  doing  in  the  Sheffield  plant 
for  the  oxidation  of  ammonia.  We  are  now  able  to 
utilize  nitrogen  from  the  air,  fixed  by  any  process, 
for  we  have  at  hand  the  means  of  converting  it  readily 
into  nitric  acid  for"  war  purposes,  while  in  its  ammonia 
form  it  is  readily  usable  in  a  variety  of  combinations 
for  fertilizer.  Nor  does  all  of  the  ammonia  have  to 
be  oxidized  to  make  it  available  for  purposes  of  death 
and  destruction.  By  using  a  part  of  the  nitric  acid 
in  combination  with  ammonia,  forming  ammonium 
nitrate,  we  have  a  prime  explosive  of  peculiarly  deadly 
force.  Much  of  the  American  supply  of  by-product 


120      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

ammonia,  all  of  which  was  commandeered  by  the  War 
Department,  was  utilized  in  this  way,  the  nitric  acid 
required  being  obtained  from  Chile  nitrates.  The  hand- 
grenades  which  figured  so  largely  in  trench  warfare 
derive  their  explosive  quality  from  ammonium  nitrate. 

The  remaining  step  in  the  nitrate  program,  that  of 
encouraging  and  stimulating  the  production  of  by- 
product ammonia,  furnishes  another  illustration  cf 
the  way  in  which  the  elements  of  the  closely  knit 
German  industrial  scheme  dovetail  into  each  other. 
Germany  developed  the  coal-tar  color  industry,  based 
on  the  discoveries  of  Sir  William  Perkin,  as  well  as 
the  coal-tar  drug  industry,  and,  by  subsidized  manu- 
facture and  price-cutting,  discouraged  the  utilization 
of  coal  by-products  in  other  countries.  And  in  the 
process  of  saving  the  tar  for  these  purposes  there  is 
also  recovered  from  coal  a  considerable  volume  of 
ammonia,  either  as  such  or  as  ammonium  sulphate. 
The  proportions  of  by-products  per  ton  of  coal 
coked  by  the  modern  retort  process  are  around  20 
pounds  of  ammonium  sulphate  or  its  equivalent  in 
ammonia,  15  gallons  of  tar,  and  2  gallons  of  benzol 
and  toluol,  the  latter  being  the  basis  of  the  most 
powerful  explosive  yet  devised,  tri-nitro- toluol  or,  more 
familiarly,  TNT.  Moreover,  every  ton  of  coal  con- 
verted into  metallurgical  coke  in  the  old-fashioned 
"beehive"  coke-ovens  results  in  the  waste  of  about 
5,000  cubic  feet  of  gas  and  the  loss  of  200  pounds  of 
coke. 

We  have  made  great  progress  in  by-product  coking 
in  this  country  since  the  Germans  invaded  Belgium. 
The  end  of  this  war  found  the  United  States,  from  this 
by-product  source  alone,  far  more  independent  of  other 
nations  for  its  essential  nitrogen  supply  than  it  probably 
would  have  become  in  a  hundred  years  of  peace. 


VII 

POTASH,    SULPHURIC    ACID,    AND    DYESTUFFS 

WHILE  the  establishment  of  processes  of  fixing 
atmospheric  nitrogen  is  the  most  important 
single  chemical  development  of  the  war  so  far  as 
America's  future  is  concerned,  it  is  but  one  of  hun- 
dreds of  new  processes  or  adaptations  of  old  processes 
that  had  to  be  worked  out  and  applied  for  the  first 
time  in  America  on  a  commercial  scale  in  order  to 
insure  an  adequate  supply  of  munitions,  or  of  com- 
modities of  which  war  conditions  had  deprived  us; 
nearly  all  of  these  war-born  chemical  industries,  more- 
over, have  definite  and  valuable  importance  to  the 
peace-time  commerce  of  the  nation. 

Listen  first  to  the  story  of  potassium,  the  chemical 
element  represented  in  the  symbolism  of  science  by 
the  letter  "K"  and  discussed  here  in  terms  of  its 
oxide,  K2O,  under  its  English  name  of  potash,  or  its 
German  equivalent,  Kali.  For  you  cannot  discuss 
potash  in  any  language  or  in  any  quarter  of  the  globe 
without  reference  to  Germany.  Potash  has  for  years 
been  one  of  Germany's  trump  cards  in  that  nation's 
game  of  Weltpolitik.  No  less  an  authority  than  Prof. 
Wilhelm  Ostwald,  winner  of  the  Nobel  prize  in  chem- 
istry in  1909,  author  of  Energetische  Grundlagen  der 
Kulturwissenschaft,  is  sponsor  for  the  boast  that  Ger- 
many, through  her  control  of  the  only  known  large 
deposit  of  potash  salts,  could  say  which  of  the  "un- 


122      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

cultured"  nations  should  eat  and  which  starve.  And 
until  Germany,  in  January,  1015,  placed  an  embargo 
on  the  exportation  of  potash,  practically  the  entire 
commercial  supply  of  the  whole  world  was  obtained 
from  the  mines  of  Stassfurt,  in  the  Prussian  province 
of  Saxony.  Not  a  pound  of  German  potash  was 
added  to  the  stocks  on  hand  between  that  date  and 
the  spring  of  1919.  These  stocks  were  soon  exhausted 
not  only  in  the  United  States,  but  in  the  rest  of  the 
civilized  world.  We  did  not  starve,  but  even  allowing 
the  usual  90  per  cent,  discount  for  "swank"  from  Pro- 
fessor Ostwald's  claim,  we  did  face  a  situation  that 
was  serious  and  that  would  have  been  more  serious  if 
American  inventive  genius  had  not  found  at  least 
the  key  to  permanent  independence  of  the  German 
Kali  monopoly.  For  while  potash  is  one  of  the  most 
widely  distributed  of  the  elements,  every  attempt  for 
the  last  forty  years  to  produce  it  in  commercial 
quantities  from  any  of  the  natural  deposits  has  been 
blocked  by  the  "dumping"  of  potash  from  Germany 
at  prices  that  made  competition  impossible. 

The  United  States,  in  normal  peace  times,  used  an 
average  of  about  250,000  tons  of  German  potash 
annually.  The  demand  has  been  steadily  increasing. 
Agricultural  Department  estimates  of  the  normal 
annual  need  was  around  500,000  tons.  In  the  first 
two  years  after  the  German  embargo  went  into  effect 
we  had  used  up  all  the  reserve  stock  on  hand,  together 
with  a  considerable  quantity  re-exported  from  South 
America  as  the  price  obtainable  here  climbed  from 
$40  to  $500  or  so  per  ton,  and  throughout  1917  we 
had  no  potash  except  what  we  produced  ourselves. 
This  1917  production  amounted  to  around  30,000 
tons — about  one-eighth  of  the  pre-war  normal  aver- 
age and  one-sixteenth  of  the  estimated  1917  need! 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       123 

There  was  somewhat  more  than  this  available  for 
1918;  there  was  still  more  available  for  1919.  By 
1919  it  seemed  apparent  that  it  would  be  possible 
within  three  or  four  years  so  to  establish  certain  of 
the  processes  of  potash  production  that  whatever 
Germany  might  attempt  in  the  way  of  unfair  com- 
petition could  be  met  with  profit  to  the  producer  and 
the  full  benefit  of  comparative  prices  to  the  consumer. 

While  it  is  probably  true  that  the  use  of  potash 
in  the  past  has  been  excessive,  due  to  the  very  effec- 
tive propaganda  for  a  generation  and  more  of  the 
German  Kali  Syndicate,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that 
the  sandy  soils  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  states  re- 
quire this  element,  under  present  agricultural  condi- 
tions, in  larger  quantities  than  nature  provides  through 
the  constant  breaking  down  of  the  micas,  feldspars, 
and  green  sands  which  are  the  universal  reserve. 
The  citrus  fruits  of  Florida,  the  cotton  and  tobacco 
of  Georgia,  the  Carolinas  and  Virginia,  the  potatoes 
and  garden  truck  of  the  eastern  shore  of  Maryland 
and  south  Jersey,  cannot  be  grown  commercially 
without  potash.  By  the  beginning  of  1918  the  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  reported  the  crops  in  these 
and  other  sections  where  potash  formerly  was  used 
freely  were  showing  signs  of  potash  hunger;  1917  crops 
were  smaller  per  acre,  the  plants  less  vigorous.  Texas 
needs  no  potash  for  its  cotton,  Maine  can  produce 
potatoes  without  it ;  tobacco,  on  the  other  hand,  wher- 
ever grown,  absorbs  potash  as  a  sponge  does  water. 

As  I  have  said,  there  is  plenty  of  potash ;  the  prob- 
lem was  to  make  it  commercially  available.  Many 
sources  of  potash,  unprofitable  to  work  in  peace  times, 
contributed  to  the  small  available  supply  of  1917-18. 
Most  of  it  came  from  the  alkali  lakes  of  western 
Nebraska  and  southern  California.  Some  came  from 


i24      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  Great  Salt  Lake.  Some  was  produced  from  the 
alunite  deposits  of  southern  Utah.  A  good  deal  was 
obtained  from  the  kelp-beds  of  the  Pacific  coast. 
One  source  of  potash  supply  only  has  given  evidence 
of  probable  ability  to  meet  all  the  requirements  of 
permanent  potash  independence  for  the  United  States, 
namely,  practically  inexhaustible  supply  of  raw  ma- 
terials, low  enough  cost  of  production  to  withstand 
competition  under  any  conditions,  and  geographical 
distribution  such  as  to  minimize  transportation  costs. 
This  is  the  process  of  recovery  of  potash  from  cement- 
kiln  and  blast-furnace  dust. 

Like  many  other  important  discoveries,  what  the 
inventor  of  the  electric  precipitation  method  of  recover- 
ing potash  from  cement  and  blast-furnace  dust  found 
was  not  what  he  was  looking  for.  Columbus  set  out 
to  find  a  short  route  to  India  and  discovered  America ; 
F.  G.  Cottrell  undertook  to  preserve  the  orange-groves 
of  Riverside,  California,  from  destruction  by  dust 
from  a  cement-plant  and  discovered  a  new  industrial 
and  agricultural  resource.  It  has  long  been  known  to 
chemists  that  limestone,  coke,  iron  ore,  and  clay,  the 
ingredients  used  in  cement  kilns  and  blast-furnaces, 
contain  much  potash,  in  the  form  of  insoluble  silicates. 
When  Mr.  Cottrell,  who  is  now  chief  metallurgist  of 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Mines,  found  that  the  way 
to  prevent  the  dust  from  a  cement-kiln  from  being  car- 
ried out  through  the  stack  and  devastating  the  vege- 
tation of  the  surrounding  countryside  was  to  pass  the 
furnace  fumes  through  a  series  of  charged  electric 
wires,  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with  the  quantities 
of  dust  thus  accumulated  at  the  kiln  came  up  next  for 
solution.  Analysis  of  the  dust  disclosed,  as  had  been 
anticipated,  that  it  contained  a  very  high  percentage 
of  potash,  but  more  important  than  that  fact,  its 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       125 

atomic  affiliations  had  been  so  readjusted  by  the  heat 
of  the  kiln  that  it  was  now  readily  soluble  and  could 
be  recovered  by  a  simple  process  of  leaching. 

The  process  of  precipitating  the  cement-kiln  dust 
and  extracting  the  potash  content  has  already  found 
wide  application.  It  furnishes  at  once  a  solution  of 
the  problem  of  dust  disposition,  which  every  manu- 
facturer of  Portland  cement  confronts  as  state  after 
state  makes  it  illegal  to  discharge  the  dust  into  the 
air,  and  of  preventing  the  alkaline  potash  carried  in 
the  fumes  from  eating  out  the  linings  of  the  flues. 
Cement  manufacturers  have  for  years  been  trying  to 
use  as  small  a  proportion  as  possible  of  potash- 
bearing  ingredients.  Now  those  plants  that  have 
installed  the  Cottrell  method  find  they  can  add  sub- 
stances heretofore  discarded  and  obtain  a  more  profit- 
able by-product. 

The  annual  production  of  Portland  cement  in  the 
United  States  is  about  90,000,000  barrels.  The  aver- 
age amount  of  recoverable  potash,  as  determined  by 
a  very  thorough  and  careful  survey  that  took  in  104 
American  plants  and  nine  in  Canada,  is  about  one  and 
three-quarter  pounds  to  the  barrel  of  cement  produced. 
Without  making  any  allowance  for  improved  methods 
of  recovery,  or  for  the  increased  output  made  necessary 
by  rebuilding  after  the  war,  here  is  a  potential  supply 
of  75,000  tons  a  year  of  potash  on  a  basis  that  will 
compete  with  the  German  product  on  any  sort  of 
terms,  and  which  is  mainly  produced  in  the  sections 
of  the  country  where  it  is  most  needed,  thus  saving 
transportation  expense. 

The  blast-furnaces  of  the  United  States  offer  a 
vastly  greater  supply  of  potash,  awaiting  only  the  re- 
placement of  their  present  gas-washing  apparatus 
with  electric  precipitation  devices.  In  this  industry, 


126      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

as  in  the  cement  industry,  the  main  question  is  one 
of  installation  of  the  necessary  equipment.  Extensive 
experiments  by  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company  have 
demonstrated  the  presence  of  a  very  large  percentage 
of  recoverable  potash  salts  in  the  waste  gas  from  the 
furnaces,  now  used  as  fuel  and  for  gas-engines.  This 
gas,  in  blast-furnace  practice,  requires  washing  to  rid  it 
of  impurities,  of  which  potash  is  one.  The  electric 
precipitation  process  purifies  it  better  than  washing 
does  and  leaves  a  hot,  dry  gas  instead  of  a  cold,  wet 
one.  The  equipment  of  blast-furnaces  now  in  oper- 
ation for  this  purpose  will  necessarily  be  slow  and  ex- 
pensive, because  of  the  war  demand  for  steel  products 
and  their  consequent  high  price  and  the  difficulty  of 
getting  any  sort  of  new  machinery  for  any  but  war 
purposes.  But  sooner  or  later,  it  now  seems  clear, 
a  very  large  part  of  our  supply  of  cheap  potash  will 
come  from  these  heretofore  wasted  supplies. 

Let  us  turn  from  the  science  of  husbandry  back  to 
the  art  of  war.  The  United  States  had  to  supply 
explosives  not  only  for  ourselves,  but  for  the  Allies 
of  Europe.  To  some  extent  the  Allies  could  use  our 
powder  and  explosives,  but  most  of  their  demands 
were  for  explosives  of  somewhat  different  type,  for 
which  their  guns  and  methods  were  particularly 
adapted.  The  British  use  a  smokeless  powder  based 
on  nitroglycerin,  for  example;  ours  is  made  of  nitro- 
cellulose. It  was  a  distinct  compliment  to  the  quality 
of  American  powder  when,  early  in  1918,  the  British 
High  Command  issued  an  order  that  thereafter  all 
barrage  fire  should  be  conducted  with  American  nitro- 
cellulose powder,  because  its  uniform  quality  mini- 
mized the  danger  of  shells  falling  short  and  killing 
their  own  men.  For  the  purposes  for  which  we  use 
TNT  the  British  use  principally  picric  acid. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       127 

Picric  acid  is  made  by  the  action  of  sulphuric  acid 
on  carbolic  acid.  Carbolic  acid,  up  to  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  had  been  chiefly  made  in  England,  from 
the  coal-tar  derived  from  the  manufacture  of  illumi- 
nating gas.  The  need  for  explosives  compelled  the 
shutting  off  of  exports  of  coal-tar  and  its  products 
from  England,  and  in  this  country  we  had  no  im- 
portant coal-tar  supply.  Very  few  American  com- 
munities have  illuminating-gas  plants — -none  but  the 
oldest  a,nd  largest  cities.  And  even  in  these  as  much 
petroleum  as  coal  is  used  in  gas  manufacture.  And 
whereas  in  Europe  great  quantities  of  coal-tar  and 
other  by-products  of  coal  have  long  been  obtained 
from  specially  designed  ovens  used  for  the  prepara- 
tion of  metallurgical  coke,  the  United  States,  in  spite 
of  its  huge  steel  industry,  was  still  producing  most  of 
its  coke  from  the  old-fashioned,  wasteful  "beehive" 
coke-ovens,  the  tar  and  their  valuable  by-products 
going  to  waste. 

But  we  had  to  have  carbolic  acid,  we  had  to  have 
toluol  and  the  other  coal  derivatives,  so  one  set  of 
scientists,  under  government  direction,  began  the  in- 
stallation of  plants  to  recover  these  precious  wastes 
from  gas-works  and  coking-plants,  while  others  studied 
the  problem  of  new  methods  of  converting  these 
derivatives  into  the  forms  requisite  for  war.  A  Newark 
chemist,  who  had  never  been  especially  interested  in 
carbolic  acid,  discovered  a  method  of  producing  this 
valuable  chemical  by  the  treatment  of  benzol  with 
nitric  acid.  Mr.  Edison  financed  the  greatest  carbolic- 
acid  plant  ever  built. 

Soon  we  were  manufacturing  it  and  converting  it 
into  huge  supplies  of  picric  acid  for  the  British  and 
French,  and  incidentally  providing  the  raw  material 
from  which  phonograph  records  are  made.  The 


128      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

tough,  hard  disks  used  in  all  makes  of  talking-machines 
nowadays,  as  well  as  some  of  the  most  important  in- 
sulating materials  and  substitutes  for  wood  and  metal 
where  extreme  hardness  and  durability  are  required, 
of  which  bakelite  is  the  best  known,  are  made  from 
carbolic  acid  in  combination  with  other  materials. 
This  whole  field  of  applied  science  is  the  result  of 
research  by  American  chemists. 

To  the  uninitiated  layman  the  fact  that  the  activity 
of  German  submarines  and  the  consequent  increase 
in  freight  rates  and  scarcity  of  ships  made  it  almost 
impossible  to  import  Spanish  pyrites  had  no  especial 
significance.  To  the  industrial  chemist  it  meant  that 
we  could  no  longer  manufacture  sulphuric  acid  unless 
we  found  some  other  source  of  available  sulphur; 
to  the  manufacturer  in  almost  every  branch  of  in- 
dustry this  meant  that  he  must  close  down  his  plant, 
for  sulphuric  acid  is  not  only  the  one  universally  in- 
dispensable industrial  chemical,  but  in  the  manufact- 
ure of  explosives  its  use  is  imperative. 

We  have  in  the  United  States  the  largest  and  purest 
known  deposits  of  sulphur.  These  sulphur-beds  of 
Louisiana  and  Texas  are  all  but  inexhaustible,  but 
because  the  manufacture  of  sulphuric  acid  from  pure 
sulphur  is  more  costly  and  complicated  than  that  of 
obtaining  it  from  certain  sulphur  compounds,  the 
greater  proportion  of  our  sulphuric-acid  production 
had  for  many  years  been  from  the  pyrites  imported 
from  the  Rio  Tinto  mines.  Under  war  pressure, 
however,  means  were  found  for  converting  the  pure 
sulphur  into  acid  economically;  incidentally  there  was 
developed  a  process  of  making  "fuming"  sulphuric 
acid  in  any  quantity  and  cheaper  than  ever  before 
dreamed  of.  Moreover,  the  stimulus  of  the  war 
demand  led  to  a  great  increase  in  the  volume  of  sul- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      129 

phuric  acid  produced  by  the  treatment  of  the  fumes 
from  smelters  treating  sulphur-bearing  ores.  Almost 
all  gold,  copper,  and  zinc  ores  mined  in  this  country 
contain  sulphides.  At  almost  every  smelter  the  sul- 
phur content  is  neglected  and  allowed  to  escape  into 
the  air,  not  only  with  a  direct  economic  loss,  but 
in  some  localities  ruining  the  adjacent  countryside 
by  the  fumes,  which  are  highly  destructive  to  vege- 
tation, as  evidenced  by  the  barren  landscape  of  Butte, 
Montana.  As  a  result  of  efforts  for  the  prevention  of 
atmospheric  pollution,  notably  the  action  of  the  state 
of  Georgia  against  the  state  of  Tennessee  for  the  sup- 
pression of  fumes  from  a  smelter  situated  close  to  the 
boundary  line,  processes  for  the  recovery  of  these 
gases  and  the  conversion  of  their  sulphur  content  into 
sulphuric  acid  have  been  so  perfected  that  even  under 
normal  conditions  they  pay  well  for  their  installation. 
Several  such  installations  were  made,  one  with  a 
capacity  of  1,000,000  tons  a  year. 

To  turn  back  again  from  war  to  peace,  let  us  con- 
sider a  paradox — war's  contribution  to  the  physical 
loveliness  of  the  world.  There  is  no  more  wonderful 
transformation  known  to  science  than  the  conversion 
of  the  sticky  tars  and  vile-smelling  oils  obtained  from 
the  slow  combustion  of  coal  into  the  brilliant  dyes 
that  furnish  forth  the  palette  of  the  artist,  clothe  the 
fair  sex  with  the  tints  of  the  butterfly's  wing,  and  lend 
beauty  to  the  works  of  man  surpassing  even  the  beau- 
ties of  nature.  Not  only  colors,  but  perfumes  and  a 
wide  variety  of  invaluable  drugs  are  also  derived 
from  coal. 

An  Englishman,  Sir  William  Perkin,  first  discovered 
that  this  could  be  done;  the  Germans  developed  the 
coal-tar  industry  and  by  unfair  underselling  drove 
the  indigo-planters,  the  madder-growers,  and  other 


i3o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

producers  of  natural  dyestuffs  out  of  business  and 
obtained  a  world  monopoly.  One  of  the  greatest 
triumphs  of  applied  science  is  the  building  up  in 
America  of  a  dyestuff  industry,  using  the  crudes  and 
intermediates  produced  from  coal  by  the  same  proc- 
esses that  were  devised  for  munitions  manufacture, 
and  by  patient  and  costly  experiment  discovering  the 
German  processes  of  converting  these  into  every  color, 
shade,  and  tint  known  to  commerce. 

In  the  dyestuff  field,  as  in  other  chemical  industries, 
the  myth  of  German  invincibility  was  firmly  fixed  in 
the  public  mind.  Subsidized  German  plants  sold 
their  products  below  cost  until  their  foreign  competi- 
tors were  put  out  of  business.  As  soon  as  this  had 
been  accomplished,  it  was  no  longer  necessary  for  the 
German  exporters  to  sell  at  or  below  cost.  The 
tendency  to  this  result  was  recognized  by  the  German 
government  from  the  first,  and  every  facility  was 
afforded  to  the  growing  export  trade.  It  was  fully 
realized  by  both  the  civil  and  military  authorities 
that  if  a  world  monopoly  in  the  dyestuff  industry 
could  be  built  up  the  military  strength  of  Germany 
would  be  colossally  enhanced,  since  it  alone,  of  all  the 
great  powers,  would  then  be  in  a  position  to  secure 
immediate  supplies  of  the  vast  quantities  of  munitions 
likely  to  be  needed  in  a  modern  war. 

Up  to  August,  1914,  the  American  industry  in  dye- 
stuffs  and  coal-tar  drugs  consisted  of  little  more  than 
a  series  of  rather  small  assembling-plants.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  enormous  supplies  of  coal-tar  were 
available  and  that  several  of  the  crudes  could  be 
secured  in  this  country  under  most  advantageous 
conditions,  hardly  any  of  the  necessary  intermediates 
were  made  here,  and  the  manufacture  of  dyes  was 
almost  entirely  confined  to  working  upon  intermedi- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       131 

ates  imported  from  Germany.  The  shutting  off  of 
the  supply  of  dyestuffs  by  the  British  blockade  forced 
American  manufacturers  to  attempt  to  supply  the 
demand.  The  most  important  processes,  however, 
essential  to  the  production  of  the  most  valuable  and 
useful  dyestuffs  were  covered  by  American  patents 
taken  out  by  Germans.  These  patents  formed  a 
colossal  obstacle  to  the  development  of  the  American 
dyestuff  industry.  Under  the  Trading  with  the 
Enemy  Act,  however,  power  was  given  to  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian  to  take  over  and  sell  these  Ger- 
man dyestuff  patents.  And  in  order  to  protect  the 
new  American  industry  which  this  action  was  in- 
tended to  develop,  the  patents  were  sold  to  an  or- 
ganization known  as  the  Chemical  Foundation,  in 
which  practically  every  important  American  manu- 
facturer was  a  stockholder,  the  stock  being  placed 
in  the  hands  of  a  voting  trust  of  eminent  citizens, 
and  the  charter  was  so  framed  that  under  the  patents 
non-exclusive  rights  only  can  be  granted  on  proper 
terms  to  all  proper  applicants,  and  must  be  granted  to 
the  United  States  free  of  cost.  Approximately  4,500 
dyestuff  and  drug  patents  were  sold  to  the  Chemical 
Foundation  for  $250,000,  thus  making  it  possible  for 
any  genuine  American,  whether  a  stockholder  of  the 
company  or  not,  to  secure  the  benefits  of  these  patents 
on  fair  and  equal  terms.  These  patents,  now  being 
owned  by  Americans,  enable  their  owners,  the  Amer- 
ican dyestuff  and  drug  manufacturers,  to  forbid  and 
prevent  the  importation  of  German-made  products 
covered  by  these  patents  or  made  by  processes  so 
covered. 

Here,  again,  when  the  effort  was  made  to  follow 
the  instructions  given  in  the  German  patents,  was 
disclosed  evidence  of  Hun  trickery.  Information  ab- 


i3 2      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

solutely  essential  was  omitted  or  stated  in  such  a 
misleading  fashion  as  to  necessitate  weeks  or  even 
months  of  painstaking  chemical  research  before  suc- 
cess was  achieved.  There  is  nothing  so  complicated 
in  all  industry  as  the  manufacture  of  dyes;  so  com- 
plicated and  various  are  the  chemical  processes  in- 
volved that  there  is  no  single  chemist  who  can  by 
any  possibility  operate  all  of  them. 

A  lifetime  of  study  enables  a  chemist  to  learn  how 
to  make  some  of  the  "intermediates  " ;  other  chemists, 
whose  life-work  has  been  in  entirely  different  fields, 
must  develop  the  remaining  processes.  Chemists 
who  can  make  synthetic  indigo,  for  example,  which 
is  now  being  produced  in  America  from  the  same  raw 
materials  that  are  used  in  making  picric  acid  and 
lyddite,  may  have  no  familiarity  whatever  with  the 
processes  for  making  sulphur  black.  Each  step  in 
the  process  of  converting  the  raw  material  into  the 
finished  dyestuff  is,  indeed,  an  industry  in  itself,  and 
from  five  to  ten  different  steps,  each  requiring  its 
own  independent  plant,  are  necessary. 

How  completely  American  chemical  manufacturers 
have  solved  the  dye  problem,  with  the  co-operation 
of  the  government  and  the  utilization  of  the  coal  by- 
products industries  established  under  war  pressure, 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  range  of  1 7  5  different  colors, 
including  all  that  are  staple  for  every  sort  of  fabric, 
are  now  made  in  America  equal  in  every  way  to  the 
best  that  Germany  ever  made.  In  the  four  years  of 
the  Great  War  the  value  of  American-made  dyestuffs 
increased  from  $3,000,000  annually  to  $87,000,000. 
We  used  to  import  $9,000,000  of  dyestuffs  from  Ger- 
many every  year,  but  in  1918  we  exported  $20,000,000 
worth  to  the  markets  Germany  once  claimed  as  her 
sole  and  exclusive  property. 


VIII 

POISON   GAS 

THERE  is  no  phase  of  applied  science  in  which 
German  supremacy  at  the  beginning  of  the  war 
was  so  definite  as  in  the  field  of  chemistry;  there 
is  no  field  in  which  Germany's  defeat  has  been  so 
complete  and  so  permanent.  Prior  to  1914  Germany 
had  for  nearly  forty  years  been  the  world  center  of 
chemical  industry.  Few  important  chemical  dis- 
coveries were  ever  made  by  German  scientists,  but 
with  the  aid  of  government  subsidies  great  industrial 
enterprises,  based  upon  the  researches  of  scientists 
of  other  nations,  were  developed,  competition  by 
other  nations  was  crushed  by  means  of  underselling 
and  sharp  trade  practices  and  an  absolute  monopoly 
was  established  in  scores  of  chemical  products  which 
modern  civilization  had  accustomed  the  whole  world 
to  regard  as  necessaries  of  life. 

All  the  huge  industrial  machinery  devoted  to  chem- 
ical manuf"  "tures  in  Germany  was  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Ge.  m  government.  When  the  war  began 
not  only  the  .uysical  plants,  but  the  skill  and  re- 
sourcefulness of  tens  of  thousands  of  chemists,  trained 
for  just  this  emergency  in  the  German  technical 
schools  and  universities,  were  thrown  into  the  scales 
against  the  Allies.  In  a  sense,  the  greatest  victory  of 
the  war  was  won  when  American  and  Allied  chemists 
matched  science  against  science,  not  only  in  the  game 

10 


134      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  war,  but  in  the  intensive  application  to  the  arts  of 
peace  of  the  knowledge  which  Germany  fatuously 
believed  she  alone  possessed. 

German  chemical  science  went  down  to  defeat  all 
along  the  line.  In  the  direct  shock  of  battle  Allied 
chemistry  met  German  chemistry  and  overwhelmed 
it;  behind  the  lines  America  and  Great  Britain  built 
up  their  defenses  against  the  "war  after  the  war" 
and  established  once  for  all  the  independence  of  the 
rest  of  the  world  in  chemical  industry.  There  is  no 
other  industrial  development  due  to  war  pressure  that 
is  fraught  with  such  lasting  importance  as  the  de- 
velopment of  new  chemical  industries  in  America, 
and  none  that  so  immediately  and  directly  touches 
the  lives  of  everybody. 

The  most  spectacular  and  dramatic  challenge  by 
German  chemistry  was  the  use  of  poison  gas  as  a 
weapon  of  war.  A  wave  of  indignation  swept  over 
the  civilized  world  at  the  news  from  the  battle-field 
of  Ypres,  when  five  thousand  Canadian  soldiers  were 
suffocated  by  gas  on  April  22,  1915.  The  Allies  were 
slow  to  retaliate  in  kind;  respect  for  the  rules  of 
civilized  warfare  set  forth  in  the  Hague  conventions, 
of  which  the  use  of  poison  gas  was  in  direct  contra- 
vention, restrained  them  for  more  than  a  year.  But 
when  the  basic  law  of  self-preservation  at  last  com- 
pelled them  to  meet  the  enlarged  volume  and  in- 
creasing deadliness  of  German  gas  by  the  use  of  the 
same  weapon,  there  were  no  half-way  measures  taken. 
The  United  States  had  never  signed  the  clause  of  the 
Hague  Convention  forbidding  the  use  of  gas,  although 
Germany  had  ratified  it  on  September  4,  1900.  We 
were  violating  no  pledge,  therefore,  in  using  poison 
gas  to  the  limit. 

By  the  summer  of  1918  the  Allied  and  American 


£     55 

if 


2.    § 


136      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

forces  were  delivering  against  the  Germans  daily  five 
times  as  great  a  volume  of  poison  gas  as  the  Germans 
were  using.  The  stopping  power  and  deadliness  of 
the  gases  used  on  the  Allied  side  were,  moreover, 
definitely  greater  than  the  German  gases  possessed. 

Not  only  did  the  Allies  analyze,  match,  and  improve 
upon  every  form  of  poison  gas  the  Germans  used, 
but  American  chemists  developed  a  poison  gas  having 
at  least  seventy- two  times  the  killing  power  of  the 
deadliest  German  gas! 

It  is  literally  true  that  had  the  war  gone  on  to  the 
spring  campaign  of  1919,  upon  which  America's  prep- 
arations were  being  focused,  we  would  have  been 
able,  by  the  use  of  this  new  gas,  actually  to  smother 
the  German  army  by  divisions  at  a  time.  Not  only 
this  most  lethal  of  all  known  poisons  was  at  our  dis- 
posal, but  we  had  in  preparation  huge  mobile  guns 
for  hurling  bombs  of  this  gas  incredible  distances  and, 
even  more  wonderful,  we  had  all  but  perfected  and 
were  preparing  to  manufacture  automatic  apparatus 
for  dropping  containers  of  this  new  poison  from  the 
air,  at  a  distance  of  a  hundred  miles  or  more  from  our 
farthest  front.  When  one  of  these  containers  or  bombs 
burst  there  would  have  remained  no  living  thing  within 
a  radius  of  a  mile  or  more  a  few  minutes  later. 

The  chemical  secret  of  this  new  gas  has  not  been 
disclosed.  It  is  the  invention  of  Prof.  W.  Lee  Lewis, 
who  left  the  chair  of  chemistry  at  Northwestern  Uni- 
versity to  serve  as  a  captain  in  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment of  the  army,  and  was  assigned  to  duty  with  the 
Bureau  of  Mines.  While  working  in  the  laboratories 
at  American  University,  Washington,  Captain  Lewis 
succeeded  in  putting  together  a  chemical  compound 
such  as  had  never  before  been  recorded  and  which, 
in  its  peculiarly  toxic  effects,  acts  upon  the  human 


YANKEE  INGENUITY   IN  THE   WAR       137 

system  in  a  manner  different  from  any  known  poison. 
It  is  related  in  Washington  that  Captain  Lewis,  while 
a  student  of  chemistry,  had  by  accident  effected  this 
or  a  similar  compound  and  nearly  lost  his  own  life  as  a 


ONE   OF   THE    POISON-GAS   PLANTS 

The  soldiers  are  sending  75-mil1imeter  shells  into  the  chamber  where  automatic 
machinery  fills  them. 

result,  so  his  Washington  discovery  was  not  an  acci- 
dent, but  the  result  of  an  almost  forgotten  personal 
experience. 

The  story  of  "lewisite,"  as  this  deadly  gas  is  now 


138      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

known,  is  one  of  the  most  romantic  of  all  the  stories 
of  Yankee  ingenuity  in  the  war.  It  was  half  a  year 
and  more  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice  before 
there  was  any  official  sanction  for  the  publication 
even  of  the  fact  of  its  existence.  No  secret  of  all  the 
war  secrets  was  more  carefully  guarded.  The  sub- 
stance itself  was  known  in  the  official  records  only 
as  "G-34."  When  any  curious  inquirer  wanted  to 
know  what  "0-34"  stood  for  he  was  told  it  was 
"methyl,"  a  word  which  had  no  relation  to  the  actual 
stuff.  Even  in  the  Division  of  Chemical  Warfare  few 
officers  except  those  actually  engaged  in  the  manu- 
facture of  "methyl "  had  any  conception  of  its  potency 
and  purpose. 

Lewisite  is  an  oily  liquid  of  an  amber  color  and  with 
the  odor  of  geranium  blossoms.  It  is  highly  explosive 
and  on  contact  with  water  it  bursts  into  flame.  Let 
loose  in  the  open  air,  it  diffuses  into  a  gas  which  kills 
instantly  on  the  inhalation  of  the  smallest  amount 
that  can  be  measured  by  science.  A  single  drop  of 
the  liquid  on  the  hand  is  sufficient  to  cause  death  after 
a  few  hours;  persons  poisoned  by  lewisite  die  in 
fearful  agony.  The  pain  on  contact  is  acute  and  almost 
unendurable.  It  penetrates  through  the  skin  and 
poisons  the  blood.  It  affects  the  kidneys  first.  Then 
it  hardens  the  cell-tissues  of  the  lungs,  causing  strangu- 
lation and  contraction  of  the  heart. 

When  the  armistice  was  signed  the  Chemical  War- 
fare Division  had  on  hand  150  tons  of  lewisite, 
enough  to  have  killed  half  the  population  of  the 
United  States  if  the  containers  had  been  opened  at 
strategic  points.  To-day  there  is  none  of  the  stuff 
in  existence  except  a  few  carefully  guarded  samples 
in  the  possession  of  the  Bureau  of  Mines  and  the  War 
Department,  and  even  the  buildings  where  it  was 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       139 

made  and  the  machinery  used  in  its  manufacture 
have  been  utterly  destroyed. 

Lewisite  was  manufactured  at  Willoughby,  Ohio, 
a  suburb  of  Cleveland,  in  a  plant  known  to  the  men 
who  worked  in  it  as  "the  mouse-trap."  Every  man 
who  was  taken  into  this  plant  to  work  was  required 
to  sign  an  agreement  that  he  would  not  leave  the 
inclosure,  surrounded  by  a  high,  tight,  barbed-wire 
fence,  until  the  war  was  over.  The  signing  of  the 
armistice  released  from  their  voluntary  prison  eight 
hundred  men,  many  of  whom  had  not  been  outside 
of  the  "mouse-trap"  since  work  at  the  plant  was 
begun  on  July  26,  1918.  It  was  on  July  i2th  that 
orders  were  given  to  proceed  with  the  manufacture 
of  lewisite.  On  July  igth,  Col.  F.  M.  Dorsey,  who 
had  stepped  into  uniform  from  the  post  of  chemical 
engineer  of  the  General  Electric  Company,  had  taken 
over  the  abandoned  plant  of  the  Ben  Hur  Motor 
Company  at  Willoughby  and  put  officers  in  charge; 
by  the  26th  there  was  an  armed  guard  of  twenty-five 
men  about  the  place,  the  inside  of  the  building  was 
being  fitted  up  for  work,  and  laboratory  equipment  was 
arriving  on  passenger- trains  as  baggage.  Within  three 
months  lewisite  gas  was  being  produced  at  a  rate 
that  soon  reached  a  possible  output  of  ten  tons  a 
day.  Two  of  the  five  steps  in  the  process  of  manu- 
facture as  it  was  originally  worked  out  by  Captain 
Lewis  were  eliminated  after  the  plant  was  in  operation. 
Many  of  the  necessary  materials  were  exceedingly 
difficult  to  obtain,  and  additions  had  to  be  made  to 
the  plant  for  their  manufacture  on  the  premises. 

The  utmost  pains  were  taken  to  guard  the  secret. 
The  men  in  the  plant  were  selected  with  the  greatest 
care,  after  their  records  had  been  carefully  scrutinized. 
They  could  write  letters,  but  were  not  permitted  to 


i4o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

give  any  address  but  that  of  a  locked  box  in  the 
Cleveland  Post  Office,  through  which  all  mail  was 
passed.  Telegrams  were  sent  through  Nela  Park, 
Colonel  Dorsey's  headquarters.  The  hours  were  long 
and  the  work  hard;  the  risk  was  tremendous.  The 
workers  were  supplied,  however,  with  ample  reading- 
matter,  with  a  phonograph  and  grand  piano,  and 
kind-hearted  people  in  the  neighborhood  sent  in  fruit 
and  pies,  so  life  in  the  "mouse-trap"  was  not  without 
some  compensations.  And  in  spite  of  the  frightfully 
poisonous  nature  of  the  stuff  they  were  making,  not 
a  single  man  was  poisoned;  the  only  death  in  the 
plant  occurred  from  influenza.  To  protect  the  men 
while  at  work  there  was  devised  a  mask  and  overall 
suit  that  rendered  the  wearers  absolutely  immune. 
Masks  that  gave  full  protection  against  the  most 
powerful  German  gases  were  useless  against  lewisite. 
Chemists  of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  declare 
that  in  the  event  of  another  war  it  would  take  an 
enemy  a  year  or  more  to  discover  a  method  of  pro- 
tection against  lewisite.  Ordinary  gas-masks  would 
be  as  useless  as  mosquito-netting. 

Speedily  as  the  "mouse-trap"  was  built,  it  was  de- 
molished even  more  speedily.  To  leave  evidence  that 
might  enable  some  prying  Hun,  by  examining  ma- 
chinery, tanks,  and  apparatus,  to  guess  the  secret  of 
G-34  would  be  as  dangerous  as  to  allow  the  stuff  itself 
to  remain  in  containers  that  might  at  any  time  spring 
a  leak  and  poison  a  whole  community.  So  the  whole 
stock  on  hand,  except  for  a  few  small  samples,  was 
placed  in  heavy  iron  containers  and  loaded  on  a 
freight- train,  probably  the  most  extraordinary  train 
that  ever  passed  over  a  railroad.  Under  an  armed 
guard,  traveling  on  a  special  schedule,  unaccompanied 
by  any  railway  employees  except  the  engine-driver,  it 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      141 

took  two  days  to  travel  from  Cleveland  to  the  Edge- 
wood  Arsenal,  near  Baltimore.  There  the  containers 
were  loaded  on  a  ship  and  taken  out  to  sea,  where 
they  were  gently  lowered  into  the  water  at  a  point 
where  the  Atlantic  Ocean  is  about  three  miles  deep. 
The  slow  corrosive  action  of  the  sea- water  will  event- 
ually eat  through  the  containers,  the  liberated  lewisite 
will  mingle  with  it  and  combine  with  the  chemicals 


FROM    LEFT    TO    RIGHT:       AMERICAN,    BRITISH,    FRENCH,    AND    GERMAN 
GAS-MASKS 

of  the  ocean  to  form  new  and  non-toxic  substances. 
Even  the  fishes  in  the  vicinity,  the  chemists  believe, 
will  not  be  poisoned. 

Two  days  after  the  armistice  was  signed  workmen 
began  tearing  down  the  "mouse-trap."  By  February 
ist  there  remained  not  a  trace  of  the  whole  extensive 
system  of  barracks  and  laboratories  where  once  the 
most  deadly  chemical  compound  ever  put  together  by 
human  ingenuity  had  been  made. 

I  have  said  that  this  new  gas  is  estimated  to  be 
seventy-two  times  as  deadly  as  "mustard"  gas;  let 
me  try  to  convey  an  impression  of  just  how  deadly 
it  is. 

Mustard  gas,  as  made  in  the  Edgewood  Arsenal, 
near  Baltimore,  where  our  war-gas  production  was 


i42      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

centered,  penetrates  the  clothing  and  shoes  of  men 
exposed  to  it,  causing  frightful  burns.  A  single  drop 
of  the  concentrated,  liquefied  gas  has  been  known  to 
cause  a  fatal  burn.  Only  the  most  perfect  ventilating 
system  and  the  wearing  of  masks,  rubber  gloves,  and 
rubberized  protective  clothing  by  those  engaged  in 
the  dangerous  processes  of  its  manufacture  made  it 
possible  to  make  it  at  all.  Even  with  these  precau- 
tions the  casualties  at  the  Edgewood  Arsenal  ran  an 
average  of  three  per  cent,  a  day,  and  when  the  armis- 
tice was  signed  there  were  three  hundred  men  in  the 
camp  hospital  suffering  from  mustard-gas  burns,  and 
many  others  had  been  invalided  to  reconstruction 
hospitals. 

A  soldier  who  had  been  handling  some  of  the  in- 
gredients of  mustard  gas  brushed  a  mosquito  from  his 
ear  without  first  removing  his  gloves;  two  days  later 
his  ear  had  literally  been  burned  off. 

An  officer  came  out  of  the  laboratory  into  one  of 
the  offices.  Carelessly,  he  rested  his  glove-incased 
hand  at  the  back  of  a  swivel-chair  while  he  chatted 
for  a  few  minutes.  The  next  day  the  officer  who  sat 
in  the  chair  felt  a  burning  pain  in  the  upper  part  of 
his  back;  two  days  later  he  was  dead.  The  mustard 
gas  had  burned  into  his  spinal  cord.  It  takes  two 
pounds  of  mustard  gas  to  load  a  seventy-five-milli- 
meter shell;  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice  we  had  on 
hand  419  tons  of  this  stuff — enough  to  load  419,000 
shells.  The  charge  of  one  shell  is  calculated  to  put 
out  of  action  every  one  within  fifty  yards  when  it 
explodes. 

Mustard  gas  is  one  of  the  finished  products  of  our 
war  preparations  for  which  there  is  no  peace-time  use. 
The  great  plants  built  to  produce  the  chemicals  that 
enter  into  its  composition,  however,  and  the  huge 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       143 

supply  of  those  chemicals,  ate  a  distinct  addition  to 
the  nation's  industrial  assets.  There  was  no  way  of 
disposing  of  the  supply  of  mustard  gas  on  hand  at 
the  close  of  the  war  but  take  it  out  to  sea  and  sink  it, 
containers  and  all ;  the  action  of  sea-water,  as  the  gas 
slowly  leaks  out  of  the  corroded  containers,  neu- 
tralizes its  poison  properties.  It  could  not  be  dis- 


CONTAINERS   OF   POISON   GAS   READY  TO   SHIP  TO   FRANCE 


charged  into  the  air  anywhere  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
without  the  risk  of  destroying  life.  More  than  once, 
while  hostilities  were  under  way,  there  were  many 
tons  of  mustard  gas  in  New  York  harbor,  enough  to 
kill  every  person  in  Manhattan  if  it  were  let  loose 
with  the  wind  blowing  in  the  right  direction. 

The  basis  of  mustard  gas,  as  of  the  other  war  gases, 
is  chlorin.  The  first  gas  used  by  the  Germans  at 
Ypres,  in  fact,  was  probably  pure  chlorin.  It  has  a 
commercial  use  as  a  bleaching  agent,  and  electrolytic 
processes  for  its  production  from  sodium  chlorid — 


i44      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

common  salt — were  well  known;  but  there  was  not 
enough  being  produced  annually  in  the  whole  United 
States  when  this  country  entered  the  war  to  supply 
the  army's  needs  for  a  week.  So  at  the  Edgewood 
Arsenal  there  was  built  a  huge  plant  for  the  decom- 
position of  brine  by  electricity,  and  the  collection  of 
the  products  of  decomposition — chlorin,  caustic  soda, 
and  hydrogen.  This  plant,  the  largest  in  the  world, 
is  said,  by  American  and  foreign  chemists  who  have 
inspected  it,  to  be  also  the  most  efficient  and  econom- 
ical in  operation.  Its  capacity  of  one  hundred  tons 
a  day  of  chlorin  will  be,  it  is  expected,  available  for 
commercial  purposes. 

The  process  of  making  mustard  gas  had  to  be  worked 
out  by  scientists  after  unexploded  German  gas-shells 
containing  this  new  poison  had  been  analyzed  by 
other  chemists  and  the  exact  nature  of  the  gas  ascer- 
tained. Whether  by  reason  of  a  better  process  or 
purer  raw  materials,  American  mustard  gas  is  more 
powerful  than  the  German.  Gas-masks  that  provided 
perfect  protection  for  our  troops  against  the  most 
powerful  German  gas  were  not  enough  protection 
against  our  own,  for  the  workers  in  the  Edgewood 
Arsenal  had  always  to  be  prepared  to  respond  to  a 
gas  alarm.  So  a  new  gas-mask  was  invented  and 
issued  to  our  troops,  as  well  as  to  the  gas- workers. 

To  trace  back  the  constituents  of  mustard  gas  and 
the  other  poison  gases  to  their  sources  and  describe 
the  new  methods  and  processes  that  had  to  be  de- 
veloped before  we  could  make  a  ton  of  "dichlordiethyl- 
sulphid,"  which  is  the  technical  name  for  mustard 
gas,  would  make  an  interesting  book  in  itself.  First 
there  had  to  be  insured  an  ample  supply  of  pure 
sulphur,  through  which  the  chlorin  could  be  passed 
to  make  chlorid  of  sulphur;  then  processes  devised 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       145 

of  producing  ethylene,  a  constituent  of  coal  gas,  but 
which  may  also  be  made  by  treating  sulphuric  acid 
with  pure  alcohol.  For  these  and  other  war  purposes 
there  have  been  wonderful  developments  in  the  pro- 


LOADING   GAS-SHELLS    BY   AUTOMATIC   MACHINERY 


duction  of  sulphur  and  of  alcohol,  concerning  which 
I  tell  some  of  the  interesting  phases  elsewhere. 

Picric  acid,  the  high  explosive  that  forms  the  basis 
of  the  British  lyddite,  the  French  melinite,  and  the 
Japanese  shimose,  was  being  manufactured  in  large 
quantities  in  this  country  for  the  British  before  the 
United  States  entered  the  war.  It  was  made  by 
treating  carbolic  acid  with  a  mixture  of  sulphuric  and 
nitric  acids;  we  had  to  develop  a  carbolic-acid  in- 
dustry to  supply  the  demand  from  this  and  other 


146      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

sources  that  had  formerly  been  filled  from  Germany. 
Then  the  Division  of  Chemical  Warfare  devised  a 
combination  of  chlorin  and  picric  acid,  known  as 
chlor-picrin,  which  answered  the  same  purpose  in 
warfare  as  the  early  German  gases,  in  that  it  put  men 
out  of  action  without  necessarily  killing  them  unless 
they  were  exposed  to  it  for  a  long  time. 

There  is  no  particular  use  in  industry  for  the  511 
tons  of  chlor-picrin  we  had  left  on  hand  when  the  war 
ended,  but  the  picric-acid  industry,  now  firmly  es- 
tablished in  America,  is  of  great  value.  Picric  acid 
was  not  used  as  an  explosive  until  very  recently; 
as  a  dyestuff  it  has  been  known  for  1 50  years.  It  is, 
in  fact,  the  very  first  of  the  synthetic  chemical  dyes 
to  have  become  commercially  successful.  With  an 
ample  supply  of  picric  acid  available,  the  yellow  dyes 
for  which  the  world  was  formerly  dependent  upon 
Germany  can  now  be  made  in  America;  with  the 
utilization  of  other  products  which  the  war  com- 
pelled us  to  learn  to  make,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that 
we  are  already  independent  of  Germany  in  the  matter 
of  dyes. 

Most  valuable  of  all  the  products  of  the  Edgewood 
Arsenal  in  its  peace  applications,  as  well  as  constituting 
in  its  production  a  distinct  economic  triumph,  is 
phosgene.  In  point  of  military  effectiveness  phosgene 
ranks  between  chlor-picrin  and  mustard  gas;  it  is 
the  gas  of  which  the  largest  quantity  was  used  by 
the  Germans,  and  when  the  armistice  was  signed  the 
United  States  had  the  largest  plant  in  the  world  for 
its  manufacture  and  1,308,000  pounds  of  this  gas  on 
hand.  Its  name,  phosgene,  is  of  Greek  derivation 
and  signifies  "light-born";  it  is  made  by  combining 
chlorin  and  carbon  monoxid  in  sunlight. 

At  Edgewood  Arsenal  the  chemists  drawn  into  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       147 

service  from  the  Bureau  of  Mines  and  from  all  the 
universities  and  chemical  research  laboratories  of 
America  to  work  under  the  direction  of  Col.  William 
H.  Walker,  who  left  the  chair  of  chemical  engineering 
at  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  to  take 
command  of  gas  production,  devised  and  installed 


GENERAL  VIEW  OF  THE  EDGEWOOD  ARSENAL  NEAR  BALTIMORE  WHERE 
GAS-SHELLS   WERE   LOADED 

new  processes  for  the  production  of  carbon  monoxid 
and  its  combination  with  chlorin  to  make  phosgene, 
and  produced  enormous  quantities  of  the  latter  at  a 
cost  of  less  than  fifteen  cents  a  pound.  This  is  less 
than  one-tenth  of  the  former  commercial  price  of 
phosgene,  which  has  long  played  an  important  part 
in  the  dyestuff  industry  and  used  to  sell  in  quantities 
for  $1.50  a  pound. 

"A  value  to  the  United  States  equal  at  least  to  the 
whole  cost  of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Division  for  the 
period  of  the  war  can  be  credited  to  the  cheap  and 
simple  method  of  producing  phosgene  developed  at 
Edgewood  Arsenal,"  said  an  officer  who  is  a  chemical 


148      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

engineer  when  not  in  uniform.  "The  government 
has  distributed  samples  of  phosgene  large  enough  to 
be  used  commercially  to  a  large  number  of  industrial 
concerns,  together  with  complete  detailed  formulas. 
Nothing  could  be  more  helpful  in  the  establishment  on 
a  permanent  basis  of  the  dye  industry  than  to  have 
this  knowledge  available." 

Phosgene  is  the  basis  of  a  wide  variety  of  colors. 
Numberless  greens,  brilliant  scarlet,  yellows,  violets, 
and  blues  are  all  made  by  means  of  aniline  combina- 
tions with  phosgene  in  different  proportions  and  ways. 
It  also  has  the  property  of  attacking  iron  oxid  and 
utterly  absorbing  it.  Brickwork  at  the  Edgewood 
Arsenal  has  been  bleached  almost  white  where  phos- 
gene has  come  in  contact  with  the  iron  oxid  which 
gives  ordinary  bricks  their  red  color.  Another  ex- 
tremely important  use  of  this  gas  is  in  destroying 
the  brownish  tones  of  glass,  due  to  the  presence  of 
minute  quantities  of  iron  oxid  in  the  sand  from  which 
the  glass  was  made.  Part  of  the  success  of  American 
glass-makers  in  producing  a  clear  optical  glass  for 
photographic  and  other  lenses  was  due  to  the  use  of 
phosgene  for  this  purpose. 

Besides  the  gases  already  referred  to,  the  two 
thousand  expert  chemists  and  ten  thousand  and  more 
soldiers  and  special  employees  who  took  part  in  the 
work  of  the  "offensive"  section  of  the  Chemical 
Warfare  Division  devised  ways  for  producing  on  an 
unprecedented  scale  such  interesting  commodities  as 
white  phosphorus,  which  bursts  into  flame  on  the 
least  contact  with  dampness — even  ordinary  damp 
air — and  gives  off  an  intense  white  smoke,  used  for 
filling  incendiary  and  smoke  bombs;  stannic  tetra- 
chlorid,  the  product  for  which  we  were  all  urged  to 
save  tin,  a  gas  that  was  found  most  effective  for  driv- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      149 

ing  Boches  out  of  their  dugouts,  and  titanium  tetra- 
chlorid,  equally  lethal.  Note  the  "chlor"  syllables 
in  the  names  of  all  of  these  gases,  indicating  chlorin 
as  part  of  their  composition,  and  their  derivation  from 
common  salt.  White  phosphorus  is  made  from  bones 
after  they  have 
been  boiled  to  ex- 
tract all  the  gelati- 
nous matter  for 
glue.  We  had 
1,320,000  pounds 
of  this  material 
on  hand  when 
the  war  ended, 
606,000  pounds  of 
stannic  chlorid, 
and  306,000 
pounds  of  titan- 
ium tetrachlorid. 
The  three  last- 
named  chemicals 
were  made  in  out- 
side laboratories 
and  shipped  to 
the  Edgewood  Ar-  A  HORSE  GAS-MASK 

Senal  tO  be  placed       ^  '1S  easier  to  protect  horses  than  men.     The  horse 
never  breathes  through  his  mouth.     Horses  have  sur- 
in     Shells     and  vived  mustard  gas  after  several  hours'  exposure. 

bombs  for  ship- 
ment overseas.  Nothing  could  be  more  ingenious 
or  effective  than  the  immense,  almost  completely 
automatic  plants  for  filling  shells  with  these  deadly 
chemicals.  There  were  no  precedents  to  go  by. 
Everything  had  to  be  designed  from  the  blank 
paper  before  construction  could  be  even  begun,  but 

so  effective  was  the  machinery,  when  once  installed, 
11 


i5o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

that  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  shells,  bombs,  and 
grenades  were  being  filled  every  week  when  the  war 
ended.  Every  precaution  that  human  ingenuity  could 
devise  was  installed  to  make  it  possible  to  do  this 
work  with  the  least  possible  risk  to  the  man  en- 
gaged; nevertheless,  it  was  so  difficult  to  obtain 
civilian  help  that  finally  it  was  all,  or  practically  all, 
done  by  soldiers  detailed  for  the  purpose. 

Here  are  some  figures  from  the  confidential  records 
of  the  War  Department  that  give  perhaps  as  im- 
pressive an  idea  as  can  be  obtained  of  the  full  scope 
and  extent  of  our  gas-warfare  preparations.  When 
the  armistice  was  signed  we  had  on  hand,  finished 
and  loaded,  or  ready  for  loading,  1,556,886  75- 
millimeter  gas-shells;  92,496  gas-shells  for  4.7-inch 
guns;  629,910  gas-shells  for  15 5-millimeter  guns  and 
howitzers;  739,854  hand-grenades  filled  with  stannic 
tetrachlorid,  and  besides  a  miscellaneous  supply  of 
other  kinds  of  gas-shells  and  bombs  and  gas-projectors 
there  were  ready  for  use  48,349  gas-shells  for  8- 
inch  seacoast  guns.  And  on  this  later  item  hangs 
one  of  the  war  secrets  that  could  not  be  disclosed 
while  hostilities  were  in  progress. 

It  was  not  until  after  the  end  of  the  war  that  it 
was  learned  that  1 4-inch  navy  guns  on  railroad 
mounts  had  been  used  by  the  American  forces  on 
the  western  front.  Then  it  was  announced  that  the 
navy's  experiment  with  these  guns  had  been  so  suc- 
cessful that  the  army  had  in  readiness  or  preparation 
a  considerable  number  of  large-caliber  guns  mounted 
on  railroad  trucks  for  use  in  the  spring  campaign. 
Still  later  it  was  revealed  that  these  8 -inch  sea- 
coast  guns  were  to  be  used  to  hurl  the  largest  gas- 
shells  ever  made  twelve  or  fifteen  miles,  if  need 
be,  and  the  charge  of  lewisite  each  shell  would 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       151 

carry  would  literally  wipe  out  an  entire  regiment 
of  Germans. 

Originally  designed  for  coast  defense,  these  guns 
are  of  high  power  and  long  range.  Mounted  on  rail- 
way trucks,  they  can  be  moved  quickly  from  point 
to  point  behind  the  lines,  and  the  mounting  is  so 
designed  that  the  gun  is  ready  to  fire  within  five  min- 
utes after  arriving  at  the  designated  spot.  It  does  not 
take  a  very  vivid  imagination  to  picture  the  havoc 
that  half  a  dozen  well-placed  shots  from  one  of  these 
weapons,  the  shells  charged  with  the  most  deadly  gas 
yet  devised,  would  have  worked  on  the  German  morale. 

Our  government  possessed  even  a  more  efficient 
means  than  this,  however,  for  smothering  the  Ger- 
mans with  poison  gas.  This  was  the  automatic  air- 
plane, a  device  which  was  kept  so  secret  that  even 
six  months  after  the  signing  of  the  armistice  only  a 
few  of  the  higher  officials  of  the  War  Department 
knew  of  its  existence  and  most  of  these  did  not  under- 
stand the  principle  by  which  it  operated.  Only  one 
of  these  machines  was  built,  but  its  success  proved  the 
possibility  of  constructing  cheaply  and  speedily  a 
fleet  of  airplanes  the  flight  of  which  can  be  controlled 
without  having  a  human  being  on  board,  and  which 
can  be  relied  upon  to  drop  bombs  of  poison  gas  at  a 
distance  of  fifty  or  one  hundred  miles  from  their 
starting-point  and  to  drop  them  within  half  a  mile  of 
the  point  previously  determined  upon  as  the  objective! 

A  bomb  is  not  likely  to  be  efficient  at  the  range  of 
half  a  mile;  bombs  of  such  effectiveness  would  make 
too  heavy  a  load  for  any  but  the  largest  aircraft. 
The  lewisite  gas,  however,  has  a  range  limited  only 
by  the  direction  and  velocity  of  the  wind  with  rela- 
tion to  the  point  where  it  is  set  free.  Half  a  dozen 
lewisite  gas-bombs  weighing  three  hundred  pounds 


152      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

or  so  each,  exploded  to  windward  of  the  city  of  Berlin, 
would  have  killed  the  entire  population  of  the  German 
capital.  And  by  the  use  of  the  automatic  airplane 
for  dropping  these  bombs,  all  danger  to  the  attacking 
force  would  be  eliminated.  The  worst  that  could 
happen  would  be  to  have  the  'planes  themselves 
brought  down  by  the  enemy,  who  would  get  the  sur- 
prise of  his  life  when  the  lewisite  gas  began  to  cir- 
culate in  his  vicinity. 

The  automatic  airplane  was  a  development  under 
army  direction  of  the  navy's  "aerial  torpedo,"  de- 
signed for  dropping  high-explosive  bombs  upon  hostile 
war-ships.  The  conception  of  an  airplane  guided 
automatically  by  means  of  a  gyroscope  originated  with 
Elmer  E.  Sperry,  the  American  inventor  of  the  gyro- 
scopic compass  and  the  gyroscopic  stabilizer  for  ships ; 
an  airplane  equipped  with  a  stabilizer  of  this  type 
flew  without  control  around  the  Eiffel  Tower  before 
the  war.  When  the  war  ended  Mr.  Sperry  had  de- 
veloped an  aerial  torpedo  entirely  controlled  by  gyro- 
scopes, intended  for  navy  use,  while  the  army  had 
adapted  it  for  overland  purposes  by  combining  with 
the  Sperry  gyroscope  the  Wright  stabilizer,  invented 
by  Orville  Wright,  consisting  of  pendulums  so  at- 
tached that  any  deviation  of  the  plane  from  a  normal 
flying  angle  automatically  adjusts  the  ailerons  and 
elevators  and  the  craft  is  thus  brought  back  into  a 
normal  course.  Mr.  Wright  had  flown  over  a  circular 
course  for  more  than  an  hour  with  a  machine  so 
equipped,  without  touching  the  controls,  a  year  or  so 
before  the  war.  The  apparatus  was  mounted  in  a 
very  small  and  simple  airplane  and  connected  with 
a  timing  mechanism  operated  by  clockwork  and  de- 
signed to  turn  the  'plane  around  and  bring  it  back 
to  its  starting-point  after  a  given  number  of  hours 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       153 

and  minutes;  this  timing  mechanism  was  also  designed 
to  operate  the  trigger  of  a  release  mechanism  for  drop- 
ping a  bomb  or  a  series  of  bombs  at  a  predetermined 
moment.  It  could  be  so  adjusted  that  the  machine 
would  fly  around  a  mountain,  if  necessary. 

Numerous  experimental  flights  proved  the  entire 
practicability  of  this  device;  the  most  spectacular  of 
them  demonstrated  that  the  machine  so  equipped 
had  automatic  stability  in  the  air  beyond  anything 
its  makers  had  dreamed  of. 

The  machine  was  sent  up  at  the  Wright  flying-field 
near  Dayton.  It  had  flown  but  a  short  distance  when 
a  sudden  gust  of  wind  caught  it  and  the  control 
mechanism  became  jammed  for  a  moment.  To  the 
alarm  of  the  spectators,  the  nose  of  the  'plane  pointed 
straight  up  into  the  air;  it  paused  there  a  moment  as 
if  about  to  drop  in  a  tail  spin;  then,  as  gracefully  as 
Vedrines  himself  ever  did  it,  it  "looped  the  loop"  and 
resumed  its  horizontal  course.  But  in  "looping  the 
loop"  the  clockwork  control  mechanism  fell  out.  It 
had  not  been  thought  necessary  to  anchor  it  in  place. 
So  instead  of  coming  back,  after  making  a  short  turn 
over  the  neighboring  countryside,  the  machine  swung 
wide  in  a  great  circle  over  the  city  of  Dayton.  Back 
it  came  toward  the  flying-field  and  once  more  around, 
a  mile  high  in  the  air,  its  creators  on  the  ground 
watching  in  helpless  wonder  as  Frankenstein  must 
have  watched  the  monster  his  inventive  genius  had 
involved.  Four  times  the  uncontrolled  'plane  circled 
over  the  city  and  back  to  the  flying-field,  until,  having 
traveled  more  than  one  hundred  miles  alone  in  the 
air  and  its  gasolene-tank  being  emptied,  it  glided  earth- 
ward and  landed  with  a  crash  in  a  near-by  field. 

When  those  in  charge  of  the  experiment  hurried  to 
the  spot  they  found  a  crowd  of  farmers  and  officers 


154      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

trying  to  lift  the  machine  off  the  ground  in  order  to 
rescue  the  aviators  who  were  supposed  to  be  buried 
in  the  wreckage.  For  a  moment  there  was  great 
danger  that  the  secret  of  the  automatic  airplane 
would  leak  out,  until  one  of  the  observers  with  rare 
presence  of  mind  announced  that  the  pilot  had  made 
a  parachute  jump  just  before  the  crash! 

Although  this  device  was  perfected  too  late  to  be 
of  use  before  hostilities  ceased,  the  fact  of  its  ex- 
istence gives  added  weight  to  the  words  of  General 
Gouraud,  the  famous  French  commander,  who  has 
declared  that,  brutal  and  savage  as  was  the  Great 
War,  the  next  war  will  be  even  more  brutal  and 
savage.  It  would  be  difficult,  however,  to  imagine  a 
more  potent  discourager  of  war  than  the  knowledge 
that  the  enemy  possesses  such  weapons  and  resources 
as  lewisite  gas  and  the  automatic  airplane.  If,  in 
addition  to  the  enormously  valuable  contributions  to 
peaceful  industry  which  I  have  indicated,  America's 
preparations  for  chemical  warfare  prove  a  deterrent 
of  future  wars,  they  will  have  easily  been  worth  all 
they  have  cost  us. 


IX 

A   REVOLUTION   IN    SHIP-BUILDING 

WHEN  the  United  States  declared  war  on  Ger- 
many the  German  submarines  were  sinking 
merchant-ships  faster  than  all  the  yards  of  Great 
Britain,  the  United  States,  and  the  rest  of  the  world 
could  build  them.  It  was  patent  at  a  glance  that  it 
would  be  perfectly  useless  for  us  to  raise,  train,  and 
equip  armies  unless  there  were  ships  available  to 
take  them  across  to  France,  and  to  transport  the 
enormous  quantities  of  supplies  which  would  be 
needed. 

To  the  question,  "What  can  America  provide  that 
will  be  of  the  greatest  value  to  the  Allies?"  put  to 
Premier  Lloyd  George  of  Great  Britain,  the  answer 
came  back  without  an  instant's  hesitation: 

"Ships,  ships,  and  more  ships!" 

How  we  were  going  to  supply  ships  was  a  problem 
for  which  no  answer  seemed  to  be  in  sight.  Once 
the  foremost  ship-building  nation  in  the  world,  with 
our  fast  sailing  packets  flying  the  gridiron  flag  in 
every  port  of  the  seven  seas,  we  had  almost  forgotten 
the  art  of  ship  construction.  When  the  iron  ship 
began  to  replace  the  wooden  vessel,  steam  to  crowd 
out  sails,  and  the  screw  propeller  to  displace  paddle- 
wheels,  we  were  busy  with  a  Civil  War;  by  the  time 
we  began  to  recover  from  it  Great  Britain  had  de- 
veloped the  ship-building  industry  to  a  point  where 


156      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

competition  seemed  impossible.  We  of  America  de- 
cided to  let  her  keep  it  and  invest  our  capital  in  other 
forms  of  industry. 

To-day  the  United  States  government  is  the  largest 
ship-owner  in  the  world.  On  April  6,  1917,  there  were 
but  6 1  shipyards  in  the  United  States,  of  which  only 
37  were  equipped  to  build  steel  ships;  when  the  armis- 
tice was  signed  there  were  341  yards,  which  were 
building  ships  for  the  government  on  1,284  ways,  as 
compared  with  142  available  ways  in  1917.  Gigantic 
new  shipyards  owned  by  the  government  were  built, 
five  of  them  for  steel  and  seven  for  concrete  ships; 
from  these  and  privately  owned  yards  496  new  ships 
with  an  aggregate  dead-weight  tonnage  of  2,828,781 
had  been  added  to  our  merchant  fleet;  399  of  these 
were  of  steel.  There  had  been  launched  285  more  ships 
and  the  keels  had  been  laid  for  743  more.  What  with 
the  German  and  Austrian  ships  seized  and  other 
foreign-owned  and  American  ships  chartered,  there 
were,  by  September  i,  1918,  under  the  control  of  the 
government,  1,656  vessels  with  a  total  dead- weight 
tonnage  of  7,219,823. 

New  ships  were  being  delivered  at  a  rate  rapidly 
climbing  above  400,000  tons  a  month,  and  there  were 
contracts  outstanding  for  1,475  ships,  aggregating 
10,835,491  tons,  with  every  assurance  that  these  ships 
could  and  would  be  built  and  delivered  on  schedule 
time. 

From  less  than  45,000  men  employed  in  the  ship- 
building yards  of  America,  more  than  380,000  were 
so  employed  when  the  war  came  to  an  end;  in  the 
boiler  and  engine  works  and  other  industries  allied 
to  the  ship-building  trade  were  another  quarter  of  a 
million. 

On  July  4,   1918,  the  United  States  of  America 


THE  GUN  THAT  BEAT  THE  HUN 

The  pneumatic  riveter,  known  to  shipyard  workers  as  the  "-air-gun,"  is  a  Yankee 
invention  that  alone  made  possible  our  great  ship-building  program. 


158      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

celebrated  its  one  hundred  and  forty-second  birthday 
by  launching  in  a  single  day  more  seagoing  ships 
than  had  ever  been  launched  from  our  shores  be- 
fore in  a  whole  year.  Ninety-six  vessels,  having  a 
total  capacity  of  nearly  half  a  million  tons,  went 
overboard.  Besides  this  enormous  tonnage  of  mer- 
chant-shipping there  were  many  launchings  of  de- 
stroyers and  other  naval  craft. 

To  establish  in  such  an  incredibly  short  time  an 
industry  of  such  gigantic  size  from  such  a  trivial 
beginning  meant  the  development  of  new  methods  of 
building  ships.  It  meant  that  new  ways,  too,  had  to 
be  found  to  train  ship-builders,  since  we  had  no  con- 
siderable body  of  workers  who  had  ever  had  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  any  phase  of  ship  construction. 
Ships  are  now  built  by  the  same  distinctively  Amer- 
ican method  of  manufacture  that  we  have  become 
familiar  with  in  the  production  of  automobiles  and 
a  thousand  other  articles,  the  method  which  is 
America's  most  important  contribution  to  the  world's 
industry,  known  as  "quantity  production." 

Quantity  production,  whether  of  shoes  or  ships  or 
sealing-wax,  means,  first,  deciding  on  a  single  size, 
type,  or  design  of  product  to  be  made  in  a  particular 
plant,  then  fabricating  the  parts  that  go  into  that  prod- 
uct in  quantities  exactly  alike,  so  that  when  assembled 
there  will  be  no  essential  difference  between  any  two 
of  the  finished  articles,  and  doing  all  of  this  with 
machinery  specially  designed  for  the  purpose  and  so 
automatic  in  its  operation  that  even  the  unskilled 
laborer  can  perform  the  necessary  manual  operations. 
That  is  precisely  the  plan  followed  in  our  entire  ship- 
building program.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  the  art,  ships  exactly  alike  in  every  detail  were  and 
still  are  being  built  by  identical  methods,  from  iden- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       159 

tical  plans,  out  of  parts  fabricated  in  quantity,  hun- 
dreds, even  thousands  of  miles  from  the  yards  where 
they  are  assembled.  There  are  several  different  sizes 
of  these  standard  ships,  but  all  of  the  5,5oo-ton  ships 


THE   SHIP   THAT    WAS   BUILT   IN   TWENTY-SEVEN   DAYS 
View  of  the  Tuckahoe  on  the  third  day,  showing  floors  in  place. 

are  alike,  all  the  7,5oo-ton  ships  are  interchangeable 
in  every  part,  each  with  the  other,  all  the  io,ooo-ton 
craft  contain  the  same  number,  size,  and  shape  of 
parts.  This  had  never  happened  before.  Even  when 
ships  have  been  built  from  identical  plans,  so  much 


160      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  the  "fairing"  of  the  lines  has  been  left  to  the  engi- 
neer or  marine  architect  in  charge  of  construction  that 
the  finished  ships  would  differ,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Lusitania  and  Mauretania,  sister  ships  that  differed 
in  length,  in  beam,  and  in  other  dimensions.  The 
Olympic  was  in  commission  a  year  and  more  before 
the  Titanic  was  launched,  but  it  was  not  until  the 
Titanic  was  actually  afloat  that  the  builders  were 
able  to  tell  her  exact  length  and  draft,  which  differed 
substantially  from  the  Olympic. 

Now  every  beam,  angle-bar,  plate,  or  other  part  of 
a  standard  ship  is  finished  at  the  fabricating  plant, 
even  down  to  the  correct  bevel  of  the  edges  and  the 
punching  of  the  innumerable  rivet-holes.  Speed  in 
ship-building,  as  well  as  economy  of  cost,  is  made 
possible  by  the  fact  that  when  these  parts  reach  the 
yards  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  rivet  them  together. 

Building  a  modern  steel  ship  is,  after  all,  different 
in  no  essential  particular  from  building  a  bridge  or 
a  skyscraper.  A  steel  ship  does  not  depend  for 
rigidity  upon  the  strength  of  the  keel,  as  does  the  old- 
fashioned  wooden  ship,  but  upon  the  proper  construc- 
tion of  its  entire  frame,  exactly  as  does  a  bridge. 
It  is  really,  from  an  engineering  viewpoint,  merely 
an  inclosed  girder,  built  of  structural  steel  shapes  and 
plates  riveted  together  and  covered  with  a  skin  or 
"shell,"  as  the  ship-builders  term  the  outer  sheathing, 
of  steel  plates  riveted  to  each  other  and  to  the  frames. 
These  plates  may  be  anywhere  from  five-eighths  of  an 
inch  to  an  inch  or  more  thick,  depending  on  the  size 
of  the  ship  and  where  they  are  used;  the  bottom 
plates  are  the  heaviest. 

When  one  considers  that  in  a  5,000- ton  steel  ship 
there  are  something  like  half  a  million  rivets,  in  a 
7,5oo-ton  craft  nearer  a  million,  the  part  the  riveter 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       161 

plays  in  the  assembling  of  the  ship  is  of  manifest  im- 
portance. The  plates  and  beams  that  form  the  keel 
have  to  be  riveted  together.  To  these  are  riveted  the 
"floors,"  the  transverse  members  that  form  the  frame 
of  the  bottom  of  the  ship  and  extend  crosswise  from 
the  keel;  these  may  be  as  much  as  five  feet  high  on 


THE  "TUCKAHOE"  ON  THE  TWENTY-SEVENTH  DAY 

All  ready  for  launching,  upper  works  finished,  engines  installed,  even  the  anchors 
in  place. 


i62      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

a  large  ship.  To  the  ends  of  the  floors  are  riveted 
the  frames;  the  deck-beams  are  riveted  to  the  frames, 
and  the  decks  to  the  beams;  then  the  bulkheads  have 
to  be  riveted  to  beams,  frames,  and  floors,  the  outer 
skin  or  shell  riveted  on,  a  plate  at  a  time,  each  plate 
secured  to  each  other  plate  where  it  joins  at  the  ends 
by  a  row  of  three  rivets,  along  its  edges  by  a  double 
row  of  rivets  to  the  adjoining  row  or  "strake"  of 
plates,  and  wherever  it  crosses  a  frame,  floor,  or  beam, 
riveted  fast  with  a  close  row  of  rivets.  The  rule  in 
steel  ship-building  is,  "Wherever  two  pieces  of  steel 
touch,  rivet  them."  Then  there  is  the  inside  skin,  or 
"cieling, "  to  be  riveted  into  place,  the  deck  openings 
to  be  strengthened  by  the  riveted  hatch  coamings,  or 
"  strongbacks, "  and  by  this  time  there  are  not  more 
than  ten  or  fifteen  thousand  more  rivets  to  be  driven 
for  the  tanks,  shaft-tunnel,  deck-houses,  and  other 
parts  of  the  ship,  without  counting  those  that  hold 
the  boilers  together. 

When  it  is  considered,  also,  that  practically  every 
rivet  must  be  water-tight  in  its  hole  and  hold  the  plates 
together  with  a  water-tight  pressure,  and  that  for 
tanks  they  must  also  be  oil-tight,  it  looks  like  a  job 
for  skilled  workmen.  But  the  "air-gun,"  as  every 
shipyard  worker  calls  the  pneumatic  hammer,  en- 
ables unskilled  men  to  become  expert  riveters  in  a 
short  time.  It  strikes  a  thousand  blows  a  minute 
on  the  nose  of  a  red-hot  rivet  with  the  force  of  one 
hundred  pounds  behind  every  blow. 

When  the  "boys"  at  the  Port  Newark  yards  of 
the  Submarine  Boat  Corporation  got  to  discussing, 
late  in  March,  1918,  just  how  many  rivets,  were  really 
a  good  day's  work  for  the  standard  "gang,"  composed 
of  riveter,  "passer-up, "  and  "heater- boy,"  they  little 
dreamed  they  were  inaugurating  a  new  form  of  in- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      163 

ternational  sporting  contest  that  would  prove  to  be 
as  important,  at  least,  if  not  as  prominent  a  feature 
for  the  society  page,  as  polo,  yacht-racing,  tennis,  or 
golf. 

In  three  months  the  title  of  champion  riveter  of 


VIEW   OF    THE    WOODEN    SHIP  "ABERDEEN"  TAKEN  FORTY-NINE  HOURS 
AFTER  THE    KEEL   WAS  LAID,    SHOWING   STERN   IN   PLACE 


the  world  crossed  the  Atlantic  three  times,  was  held 
by  an  Englishman,  a  Scotsman  and  an  Irishman,  and 
by  three  different  Americans. 

Four  hundred  rivets  a  day  was  regarded  as  a  good 
day's  job,  on  straightaway  work  in  easily  accessible 
positions,  as  on  the  frames  of  a  ship,  where  the  riveter  * 
and  the  "passer-up"  or  "holder-on"  can  work  to- 


164      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

gether  like  one  man.  Some  of  the  Port  Newark  boys 
thought  it  might  be  possible  to  get  six  hundred  or 
even  more  a  day.  Others  disagreed,  and  immediately 
it  became  apparent  that  there  existed  that  difference 
of  opinion  without  which,  Mark  Twain  says,  there 
could  be  no  horse-races.  Bets  were  accordingly  made, 
and,  greatly  to  the  surprise  even  of  the  winning  gang, 
a  record  of  836  rivets  for  a  nine-hour  day  was  made. 
A  few  days  later  another  gang  in  the  same  yard  topped 
the  thousand  mark.  The  men  in  other  shipyards 
heard  of  these  performances,  scoffed  at  first,  then 
tried  it,  and  before  the  end  of  April  several  gangs  had 
succeeded  in  driving  about  2,000  standard  seven- 
eighths-inch  rivets  in  a  single  working-day. 

At  the  Baltimore  Drydock  and  Shipbuilding  Cor- 
poration, "Pinner"  Shock,  an  expert  riveter,  heard 
of  these  records  of  2,200  and  2,300  rivets  a  day.  One 
day,  with  a  picked  team  that  had  worked  with  him 
for  months,  he  extended  himself  a  bit  and  put  2,720 
"hot  pins"  in  place  in  nine  hours.  Then  he  laid  off 
for  a  day  or  two,  and  when  he  went  back  to  the  yards 
he  found  himself  an  international  figure.  The  news 
of  his  performance  had  been  cabled  to  England,  re- 
ceived there  with  incredulity,  and  the  British  workers 
had  been  challenged  to  beat  it.  Pretty  soon  an  Eng- 
lishman did  beat  it,  topping  the  3,ooo-mark  in  a  yard 
on  the  Thames.  The  English  papers  crowed  for 
forty-eight  hours  or  so;  then  a  Scotsman  with  an 
Irish  name,  working  in  the  Dalmuir  yards  on  the 
Clyde,  stretched  himself  and  drove  a  few  more  than 
4,300  rivets  in  a  nine-hour  day! 

"That  will  hold  the  Yankees  for  a  while,"  the 
British  remarked,  and  a  London  ship-builder  wrote  a 
letter  to  The  Daily  Mail  offering  a  prize  of  £25 
to  any  riveter,  bar  none,  who  would  beat  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       165 

Scottish  figure.     Lord  Northcliffe  was  named  as  the 
referee. 

Charles  Knight,  a  colored  riveter,  who  worked  at 
the    Bethlehem    Steel    Corporation's    "Penn-Mary" 


THE    WOODEN    SHIP    "ABERDEEN" 
Built  and  ready  for  launching  in  seventeen  days  from  the  laying  of  the  keel. 

plant  at  Sparrow's  Point,  near  Baltimore,  heard  of 
that  Scottish  record.  Also  his  eye  caught  the  notice 
of  a  fifty-dollar  bonus  for  the  first  riveter  in  the 
Sparrow's  Point  yards  who  would  top  it.  He  and  his 
gang  put  in  a  couple  of  easy  days  practising  team- 
12 


166      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

work,  just  to  get  limbered  up,  and  then  told  the  fore- 
man that  if  it  was  a  good  day  to-morrow  they  reck- 
oned they'd  go  after  that  record,  if  he'd  be  kind 
enough  to  let  them  work  on  some  of  the  hatch  strong- 
backs  that  were  waiting  to  be  riveted  up.  The  fore- 
man agreed,  the  weather  was  clear,  and  in  the  pres- 


INSIDE   THE   HULL   OF   THE    "ABERDEEN" 

The  record-breaking  wooden  ship,  looking  toward  the  bow. 


ence  of  officials  of  the  company  and  of  the  Emergency 
Fleet  Corporation,  Charles  and  his  gang  drove  4,472 
seven- eighths  rivets  in  nine  hours! 

"Jus'  cable  that  news  to  King  Gawge,  please,  suh," 
grinned  Charles,  as  he  laid  down  his  air-gun.  The 
news  was  cabled,  and  back  came  a  cable  from  Lord 
Northcliffe  authorizing  Chairman  Hurley  of  the  Ship- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      167 

ping  Board  to  award  the  £25  prize  to  Charles  Knight. 
With  the  bonus  and  the  extra  pay  the  day's  work 
netted  $277  for  Charles  and  his  gang.  The  customary 
distribution  is  50  per  cent,  to  the  riveter,  30  per  cent, 
to  the  "passer-up,"  and  20  per  cent,  to  the  "heater- 
boy";  but  Charles  used  an  extra  man,  so  he  had 
both  a  "passer-up"  and  a  "holder-on,"  and  had  to 


A  "CLOSE-UP"  OF  THE  AIR-GUN 

divide  a  little  differently.     It  was  fair  wages  for  a 
day's  work,  however. 

This  performance  put  the  Britishers  on  their  mettle 
and  set  the  American  shipyard  men  to  looking  for 
a  "white  hope"  who  could  beat  Knight's  record. 
The  white  hope  appeared  in  the  person  of  John  Corri- 
gan,  at  the  Wyandotte  yards  of  the  American  Ship- 
building Company.  John  cut  loose  one  day  early  in 
June,  and  when  the  day's  score  was  tallied  it  showed 
7,028  "hot  pins"!  But  even  while  this  was  being 
cabled  triumphantly  to  England  word  came  from 
Belfast,  heralding  John  Mowry,  a  veteran  workman 
of  the  Harlan  and  Wolff  yards,  as  world's  champion, 
and  a  day  or  two  later  John  Moir,  in  the  same  yards, 
claimed  and  was  accorded  the  incredible  performance 


1 68      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  11,209  standard  seven-eighths  rivets  in  the  floors  of 
a  standard  ship  in  a  nine-hour  working-day! 

Of  course  these  records  were  made  under  excep- 
tional circumstances,  and  while  they  had  a  noticeable 
effect  in  speeding  up  riveting  generally,  they  proved 
not  the  best  way  of  stimulating  rivalry  for  effective 
production  increase.  The  Shipping  Board  worked 
out  a  competitive  plan,  based  on  the  average  perform- 
ance per  gang  per  hour  for  a  month.  This  gave  the 
big  yard  with  250  or  more  riveting-gangs  no  better 
chance  than  the  little  yard  with  only  a  few  gangs. 
A  blue  pennant  was  awarded  every  month  to  the 
yard  making  the  best  record  the  previous  month, 
and  men  working  in  the  winning  yard  won  the  right 
to  wear  specially  designed  badges.  Under  the  stimulus 
of  this  and  other  forms  of  carefully  fostered  friendly 
rivalry  between  yards  and  between  different  gangs 
in  the  same  yard,  steel  ships  were  built  faster  than 
any  one  had  ever  dreamed  it  could  be  done. 

To  train  riveters,  schools  were  opened  at  the  ship- 
yard. Perfectly  green  workers  learned  the  art  in  a 
surprisingly  short  time.  Three  "rookies,"  none  of 
whom  had  ever  driven  a  rivet  before  he  went  to  work 
in  the  yard,  after  six  weeks  of  training  drove  in  an 
eight-hour  day  2,803  rivets,  of  which  only  twelve  failed 
to  pass  the  inspectors.  One  recruit,  who  had  never  seen 
a  shipyard  before  he  went  to  Hog  Island,  drove  867 
seven-eighths  rivets,  flush,  in  the  side  shell  of  a  ship 
in  a  single  day  after  three  months'  experience.  An- 
other, after  seven  days'  instruction  in  the  school  and 
three  weeks  in  the  yard,  drove  1,327  three-quarter- 
inch  rivets,  flush,  in  a  day.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  all 
the  riveting  at  Hog  Island  was  done  by  men  who 
had  never  handled  an  air-gun  until  they  went  to  work 
there. 


THE  PRODUCT  OF  HOG  ISLAND 

Standard  steel  ship  of  7,500  tons,  built  by  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation. 


THE  "SAGAPONACK" 

One  of  the  standard  7,soo-ton  steel  cargo  ships  turned  out  at  Hog  Island. 


i/o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Riveting  is  not  all  there  is  to  ship-building.  First 
the  steel  must  be  "placed,"  each  beam  and  plate  lifted 
by  overhead  cranes  and  firmly  fastened  with  bolts 
run  through  rivet-holes  into  the  exact  position  where 
it  is  to  be  permanently  fastened  with  rivets.  The 
spirit  of  rivalry  in  "placing"  was  also  stimulated  in 
the  yards.  Such  feats  as  laying  the  keel  of  a  ship, 
containing  200.05  tons  of  steel,  in  7^  hours  proved 
a  spur  to  emulation.  By  such  methods  steel-ship 
production  was  speeded  up  and  moved  up  to  the  end 
of  the  war  with  increasing  momentum.  All  fear  of 
an  insufficient  supply  of  skilled  labor  vanished.  And 
in  the  wooden-ship  field  the  tradition  that  only 
trained  ship-carpenters  could  build  them  was  ex- 
ploded. There  was  found  to  be  not  the  slightest 
difficulty  in  training  average  intelligent  workmen  to 
put  wooden  ships  together,  while  pneumatic  hammers 
and  drills  greatly  lessened  the  work  of  making  the 
holes  for  the  four-foot  steel  drift-bolts  that  hold  the 
six-inch  planks  to  one  another,  and  for  the  black  locust 
treenails  or  ' '  trunnels ' '  that  pin  them  to  the  ribs,  and 
in  driving  these  home. 

Up  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice  the  total  number 
of  wooden  ships  added  to  the  American  merchant 
marine  since  the  United  States  went  into  the  war  was 
eighty-four  with  an  aggregate  dead-weight  tonnage  of 
298,200.  Fifty  of  these  ships  were  built  to  the  designs 
of  the  two  young  engineers,  Hough  and  Ferris,  whose  si- 
multaneous conception  of  the  wooden  ship  as  a  cheap, 
quick,  and  efficient  way  to  get  tonnage  and  lots  of  it 
was  one  of  the  most  radical,  yet  practical,  contribu- 
tions toward  the  winning  of  the  war.  Neither  Hough 
nor  Ferris  was  a  ship-builder,  but  each  was  a  con- 
struction engineer  who  recognized  that  modern  ship- 
building is  neither  an  occult  mystery  nor  a  work  of 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       171 

art.  Each  of  them,  without  knowledge  that  any  one 
else  was  doing  the  same  thing,  worked  out  a  design 
for  wooden  ships  that  could  be  quickly  put  together 
out  of  practically  green  lumber,  and  would  serve 
every  purpose  of  a  ship.  That  is  to  say,  they  would 


A   RECORD-BREAKING   JOB   AND   THE   MEN   WHO   DID   IT 

Eighty  full    frames  of  this    wooden    ship  were  set  in   thirty-four   working-hours  at 
Portland,  Oregon. 


172      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

float,  would  hold  a  lot  of  cargo,  could  be  propelled 
by  their  own  engines,  and  were  designed  with  due 
regard  to  possible  stresses  and  strains,  viewed  from 
an  engineer's  standpoint.  Speaking  in  engineering 
terms,  a  ship  is  merely  a  box  girder;  if  it  is  strong 
enough  to  bear  its  own  weight  and  that  of  its  cargo 
when  suspended  at  either  end,  as  it  often  must  be 
when  the  waves  are  running  high,  it  is  a  good-enough 
ship  for  emergency  purposes.  The  wooden  ships 
built  as  a  war  emergency  measure  are  really  better 
than  that  description  would  imply;  how  long  they 
will  last,  however,  depends  upon  many  conditions 
that  cannot  be  determined  in  advance.  There  are 
wooden  ships  afloat  that  are  more  than  one  hundred 
years  old  and  still  giving  good  service;  one  was  recently 
overhauled  in  Norway  and  put  back  into  trans-at- 
lantic  service  that  is  more  than  two  hundred  years  old. 
Hough  and  Ferris  went  to  Washington,  each  with 
his  design  for  a  wooden  ship.  The  then  chairman  of 
the  Shipping  Board,  Edward  Denman,  was  greatly 
impressed  with  their  project,  and  it  was  immediately 
adopted  by  the  board.  Then  General  Goethals  was 
detailed  to  direct  the  building  of  ships,  as  head  of 
the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation.  General  Goethals 
could  not  see  the  wooden  ship,  except  as  a  trivial 
and  unimportant  by-product.  He  did  not  think  it 
good  policy  to  spend  time  and  energy  building  ships 
of  such  perishable  stuff;  steel  and  concrete,  such  as 
he  used  in  the  Panama  Canal,  were  good  enough  for 
him.  The  board  was  insistent,  the  general  rebellious. 
In  the  same  speech  in  which  he  expressed  his  convic- 
tion that  boards  were  uniformly  "long  and  narrow 
and  made  of  wood,"  he  remarked  that  the  birds  were 
still  nesting  in  the  trees  from  which  he  was  expected 
to  build  wooden  ships.  The  resultant  publicity  was 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       173 

followed  by  the  dismissal  of  both  Denman  and 
Goethals  by  the  President.  The  wooden  ships  have 
been  built,  however.  General  Goethals  was  right  — 
the  birds  were  nesting  in  the  trees  from  which  the 
ships  launched  less  than  a  year  later  were  constructed. 
He  was  wrong  only  in  assuming  the  project  to  be 
impractical.  Nor  are  these  ships  built  of  green  lum- 
ber. The  same  Forest  Service  method  of  kiln-drying 
lumber  in  two  weeks  that  made  possible  the  enormous 
production  of  spruce  for  airplanes  was  availed  of  for 
ship-building  as  well. 

Substantially  all  of  the  wooden  ships  are  of  the 
same  size — 3,500  dead- weight  tons.  The  largest  are 
4,7oo-tonners,  built  at  Orange,  Texas.  The  great 
majority  of  the  wooden  ships  were  built,  naturally, 
on  the  northern  Pacific  coast,  where  timber  of  sizes 
suitable  for  ship  construction  is  plentiful.  In  all, 
508  keels  for  wooden  ships  had  been  laid  and  227 
hulls  launched  when  the  armistice  was  signed.  Not 
all  of  these  were  completed  as  steamships;  when  the 
war  emergency  had  passed  it  was  regarded  as  more 
economical  to  fit  some  of  them  out  as  sailing-ships 
and  use  some  of  the  hulls  as  barges. 

The  spirit  of  competition  was  invoked  to  speed  up 
the  wood-ship  builders,  too.  While  there  is  no  op- 
portunity for  such  spectacular  performances  as  were 
made  by  the  champion  rivet-drivers,  there  was  room 
for  rivalry  between  yards  and  between  gangs  in  single 
yards  in  such  matters  as  speed  in  keel-laying  and 
frame-erecting. 

The  keel  of  a  Ferris-type  ship  consists  of  five  large 
timbers,  laid  end  to  end,  dovetailed  and  bolted  to- 
gether.   As  soon  as  a  ship  was  off  the  ways  it  became 
a  point  of  pride  to  get  a  new  keel,  the  timbers  for  which  - 
had  already  been  sawed  and  cut  to  shape,  laid  and 


174      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

bolted  up  as  quickly  as  possible.  A  Pacific  yard  did 
this  in  20  minutes  and  boasted  about  it;  at  the  next 
launching  at  an  Eastern  yard  this  time  was  cut  to 
10  minutes;  another  followed  with  a  record  of  6^ 
minutes;  soon  that  record  was  cut  to  90  seconds  by  a 
Savannah  yard,  and  a  later  report  from  the  same  yard 
gave  the  incredible  time  of  n  seconds  for  a  keel- 
laying  ! 

Erecting  the  frames,  also,  is  an  operation  that  per- 
mits of  speed  records.  A  Pacific  yard  started  this 
sport  by  putting  up  the  complete  set  of  frames  for 
a  hull  in  44  working-hours;  to  occupy  the  spare  time 
left  after  this  performance  they  did  half  a  day's  work 
of  planking  in  an  hour.  A  few  days  later  the  same 
yard  set  up  the  entire  set  of  80  frames  in  34  hours, 
and  crowed  so  loudly  about  it  that  one  of  the  Gulf 
yards  took  a  hand  and  did  the  same  trick  in  30  hours 
and  35  minutes.  Even  this  record  was  bettered  later. 


X 

SOME   EXTRAORDINARY    SHIP-BUILDING   FEATS 

YANKEE  ingenuity  and  resourcefulness  in  ship- 
building did  not  exhaust  itself  with  the  construc- 
tion by  novel  methods  and  unheard-of  speed  of  the 
steel  and  wooden  ships  referred  to  in  the  previous 
chapter.  We  built  composite  ships,  wooden  planking 
on  steel  frames.  We  performed  the  unheard-of  feat 
of  building  huge  ocean-going, cargo-carrying,  5,ooo-ton 
ships  out  of  stone — for  concrete  is,  after  all,  simply 
artificial  stone.  I  have  told  how  we  trained  unskilled 
men  into  the  fastest  riveters  in  the  world,  but  at  the 
signing  of  the  armistice  we  were  beginning  to  fasten 
the  steel  plates  of  ships  together  by  electric-welding 
devices  operated  by  women!  And  there  is  nothing 
more  typically  illustrative  of  Yankee  ingenuity  than 
the  methods  resorted  to  for  building  ocean-going  ships 
a  thousand  miles  from  the  ocean  and  floating  them 
from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  seaboard,  even  though 
they  were  twice  as  long  as  the  locks  of  the  Welland 
Canal! 

In  the  shipyards  of  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Detroit, 
Chicago,  and  Duluth  steel  cargo-ships  six  and  seven 
hundred  feet  long  and  having  cargo  capacities  up  to 
twenty  thousand  tons  had  been  built  for  years.  Every 
one  of  these  ships,  however,  was  confined  to  a  cruising 
radius  of  1,500  miles,  the  distance  between  Tona- 
wanda  on  the  Niagara  River  above  the  Falls  and  the 


176      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Duluth -Superior  port  at  the  head  of  Lake  navigation. 
While  there  are  two  water  connections  between  the 
upper  Lakes  and  Lake  Ontario,  the  larger  of  these,  the 
Welland  Canal,  with  its  series  of  forty-four  locks,  like 
a  flight  of  stairs,  will  admit  the  passage  of  no  ship 
larger  than  260  feet  in  length,  44  feet  beam,  and 
14  feet  draught.  There  had  been,  a  number  of 
years  ago,  a  half-dozen  or  more  ships  cut  in  two  and 
towed  through  the  canal  in  separate  halves,  after- 
ward being  patched  together  at  one  of  the  Lake  On- 
tario or  St.  Lawrence  River  ports.  It  was  regarded, 
however,  as  a  hazardous  experiment,  and  there  was  a 
feeling  among  shipping-men  that  the  operation  weak- 
ened the  vessel  and  tended  to  render  it  unseaworthy. 

So  pressing  was  the  need  for  merchant  tonnage, 
however,  that  it  was  obviously  wasteful  to  let  the  huge 
ship-building  capacity  of  the  Great  Lakes  yards  re- 
main unutilized  in  the  emergency.  They  were  put  to 
work  at  once  on  the  construction  of  ships  of  dimensions 
that  would  pass  through  the  Welland  Canal  locks, 
but  as  it  speedily  became  apparent  that  the  greatest 
need  was  for  larger  ships,  which  are  much  more 
economical  in  their  operation,  the  attention  of  the 
Emergency  Fleet  Corporation  and  the  ship-builders 
engaged  in  this  work  was  focused  on  the  devising  of 
safe  and  certain  methods  of  cutting  these  Lake 
freighters  in  two  and  then  fastening  the  two  halves 
together  again  on  the  lower  Lakes. 

At  one  time,  in  Detroit,  I  saw  three  different  classes 
of  ocean-going  ships  in  process  at  one  time.  One 
big  Lake  carrier  was  being  fitted  with  the  water-tight 
bulkheads,  higher  freeboard,  and  stouter  upper  works 
required  for  ocean  craft,  preliminary  to  being  sawed  in 
two  amidships  for  transportation  through  the  canal 
locks;  at  an  adjoining  yard  steel  freighters  of  4,200 


178      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

tons  dead-weight  capacity,  the  very  largest  ships  that 
could  be  taken  through  the  locks  intact,  were  being 
built,  while  at  the  third  yard  they  were  building  ships 
260  feet  long,  each  of  which  was  equipped  with  an 
additional  one  hundred  feet  of  midship  section — 
keel,  frames,  beams,  and  plates — so  that  on  reaching 
sea-level  it  could  be  taken  into  dry-dock,  cut  apart, 
and  lengthened  by  one  hundred  feet. 

One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  in  the  way  of  utilizing 
the  big  Lake  carriers  for  ocean  service  was  the  absence 
of  dry-dock  facilities  at  the  lower  Lake  ports  of 
Toronto,  Montreal,  and  Quebec.  While  it  has  been 
done,  it  is  a  risky  operation  to  attempt  to  tow  half  a 
steamship  out  through  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and 
down  the  Atlantic  coast  to  an  American  seaport. 
But  there  were  only  two  dry-docks  available  in  the 
St.  Lawrence  River,  and  they  could  handle  only  about 
four  ships  a  year  between  them.  The  problem,  then, 
was  to  devise  a  method  of  rejoining  the  two  halves 
of  a  bisected  ship  without  putting  it  in  dry-dock. 
There  were  plenty  of  docks  on  the  upper  Lakes  where 
they  could  be  cut  apart  and  temporary  bulkheads 
placed  in  the  open  ends  of  the  severed  halves.  In- 
deed, some  ships  were  taken  through  the  canal  with 
the  open  ends  filled  with  water,  no  temporary  bulk- 
heads being  necessary. 

The  problem  was  turned  over  to  E.  A.  Eustis,  a 
special  agent  of  the  United  States  Shipping  Board  and 
an  expert  ship-builder,  having  headquarters  in  Cleve- 
land. Skilled  engineers  were  called  in  and  a  method 
was  devised  by  which  twelve  of  the  largest  Lake  ships 
were  reunited  while  floating  in  the  harbor  of  Mon- 
treal. Each  of  these  ships  was  cut  in  two  on  the  upper 
Lakes,  the  separate  halves  "stepped  down"  through 
the  Welland  Canal,  and  when  the  two  halves  were 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       179 

brought  together  the  ship  was  in  every  respect  as 
strong  as  before,  and  in  the  opinion  of  some  engineers 
even  stronger.  The  method  consisted  of  placing 
temporary  frames  of  six-by-six-inch  angle-irons  around 


CUTTING   A  LAKE    SHIP   IN   TWO   PREPARATORY   TO   TAKING   IT   TO   SALT 
WATER 

Showing  the  Frontenac  being  pulled  apart  at  Cleveland. 

both  sections  of  the  ship  at  the  point  where  it  was  cut 
in  two,  in  such  a  way  that  they  could  be  closely  brought 
together  when  the  ship  was  rejoined.  These  angle- 
irons  were  bored  for  two-inch  fitted  bolts.  When  the 
two  sections  of  the  ship  were  floated  together  each 
end  was  trimmed  by  water  ballast  until  they  were 
floating  as  nearly  as  possible  at  the  same  level.  Then, 
by  driving  drift -pins  through  corresponding  holes  in1 
the  angle-irons  of  the  two  halves,  they  were  held  in 


i8o      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  proper  relative  position  while  fitted  bolts  were  in- 
serted and  the  ship  thus  held  firmly  together.  Plates 
that  had  been  removed  in  the  sawing-in-two  process 
were  put  on  and  refitted,  down  to  the  water-line. 
Then  the  ships  were  floated  over  a  caisson  ingen- 
iously devised  so  that  it  would  fit  closely  around  the 
hull  at  the  two  ends  of  the  cut.  When  the  water  was 
pumped  out  of  the  caisson  it  pressed  so  firmly 
against  the  bottom  and  sides  as  to  keep  the 
water  out  from  the  midship  section,  so  that  men 
could  work  all  the  way  under  the  ship  in  replacing 
plates,  while  the  keel  and  floor-beams  were  strength- 
ened by  heavy  plates  riveted  on  both  sides. 

Still,  the  very  largest  Lake  ships  could  not  be 
brought  down  to  the  ocean  even  by  this  means,  for 
while  a  ship  more  than  five  hundred  feet  long  could 
pass  through  the  Welland  locks  if  sawed  in  two,  the 
halves  could  not  pass  the  locks  if  the  ship  were  more 
than  forty-four  feet  wide,  the  extreme  width  of  the 
canal  prism.  This  limited  the  size  of  Lake  ships  that 
could  be  brought  to  the  ocean  to  vessels  of  about 
6,000  tons.  Nevertheless,  a  way  was  found  of 
bringing  a  io,ooo-ton  ship,  the  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 
through  the  Welland  locks,  although  it  was  460  feet 
long,  50  feet  beam,  and  33/^2  feet  deep.  This  was 
accomplished  by  first  sawing  the  Van  Hise  in  two 
across  the  middle,  stopping  the  open  ends  of  the  cut 
with  temporary  bulkheads  to  make  each  half  as 
buoyant  as  possible,  and  then  turning  each  half  on 
its  side,  so  that  the  5o-foot  dimension  was  not  cross- 
ways  of  the  lock,  but  vertical,  and  there  was  a  width 
of  only  33 ]/2  feet  to  clear  the  44-foot  width  of  the 
locks.  This  was  a  daring  experiment;  it  is  regarded 
by  shipping-men  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  feats 
of  engineering  ever  attempted.  It  was  entirely  sue- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       181 


FORWARD  HALF  OF  THE  "CHARLES  R.  VAN  RISE1'  TURNED  ON  ITS  SIDE 

SO    THE    IO,OOO-TON    LAKE    SHIP    COULD    BE    FLOATED    THROUGH    THE 

WELLAND   CANAL 

cessful,  and  had  not  the  war  come  to  an  end  within 
a  few  days  after  this  had  been  done,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  many  more  of  the  larger  Lake  carriers  would  have 
been  brought  into  ocean  service  by  the  same  means. 
Even  more  spectacular,  from  the  ordinary  lands- 
man's point  of  view,  or,  for  that  matter,  from  the  view- 
point of  the  sailor,  was  the  development  and  success 
of  the  concrete  ship.  Concrete  as  a  ship-building 


TURNING  THE   AFTER  HALF  OF  THE   "CHARLES  R.   VAN  HISE"    ON    THE 
SIDE    FOR    TOWING   THROUGH   THE    WELLAND    LOCKS   FROM   LAKE    ERIE 
13  TO  LAKE   ONTARIO 


182      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

material  was  not  entirely  unknown.  Several  years 
before  the  European  war  began  a  Baltimore  concern 
built  a  number  of  harbor  barges  of  concrete;  in  Nor- 
way a  very  small  concrete  steamship  had  been  con- 
structed. That  a  reinforced-concrete  ship  of  5,000 
tons  capacity  could  be  built  that  would  prove 
seaworthy  in  every  respect  was  a  matter  of  serious 
doubt  in  the  minds  of  most  ship-builders  and  engi- 
neers. The  San  Francisco  Shipbuilding  Company, 
however,  decided  soon  after  America's  entry  into  the 
war  to  try  the  experiment.  This  first  concrete  ship 
was  appropriately  christened  the  Faith.  She  was 
built  exactly  the  way  a  reinforced-concrete  structure 
on  land  is  built — that  is,  wooden  molds  were  made 
for  the  inside  and  outside  of  the  ship,  steel  reinforcing 
rods  were  put  in  place,  and  the  liquid  concrete  poured 
into  the  mold.  When  it  had  hardened  and  set  engines 
and  boilers  were  installed,  and  the  ship  was  launched. 
Even  the  uprights  supporting  the  deck-beams,  the 
beams,  and  the  decks  themselves  were  built  of  concrete. 
On  her  first  voyage  the  Faith  ran  into  a  terrific 
storm  off  the  Oregon  coast,  encountering  weather 
which  put  the  craft  to  the  severest  possible  test. 
The  ocean  was  swept  by  a  ninety-mile  gale,  and  most 
ships  were  tossed  about  like  corks,  but  according  to 
the  officers  and  men  of  the  Faith  the  craft  rode  on  a 
practically  even  keel  and  did  so  little  rolling  that  it 
was  scarcely  noticeable.  On  account  of  the  weight 
of  the  ship,  the  waves  broke  over  her  instead  of  lift- 
ing her,  and  a  water-tumbler  on  a  shelf  in  the  galley 
did  not  fall  off  during  the  worst  of  the  storm.  The 
Faith's  first  voyage  was  from  San  Francisco  to  Seattle, 
then  back  to  San  Francisco,  then  to  Peru  and  Chile, 
then  through  the  Panama  Canal  to  Havana  and  to 
New  York. 


BUILDING   A   CONCRETE   SHIP  IS   MUCH  LIKE    BUILDING   A   CONCRETE 
BRIDGE 

First  there  must  be  constructed  a  mold  for  the  outside  shape  and  then  the  steel  re- 
inforcements bent  and  wired  in  place. 


POURING   THE   CONCRETE   INTO  THE   MOLD   AND   AROUND   THE 
REINFORCEMENTS 

The  result  is  a  one-piece  ship  of  artificial  stone. 


184      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

So  successful  was  this  experiment  that  the  Emer- 
gency Fleet  Corporation  immediately  arranged  for 
the  construction  of  many  more  concrete  ships.  The 
second  craft  of  this  construction  was  the  Atlantus, 
built  at  Brunswick,  Georgia,  of  3,000  tons  capacity, 
being  slightly  more  than  260  feet  long.  Lessons 
learned  in  the  construction  of  the  Faith  were  utilized 
in  the  building  of  these  later  concrete  ships,  and, 
surprising  as  it  may  seem,  it  was  found  that  whereas 
a  wooden  ship  of  3,000  tons  has  planking  19  inches 
thick,  a  5 -inch  concrete  wall  was  sufficient  and  the 
resulting  ship  actually  weighed  less  than  a  wooden 
ship  of  the  same  dimensions.  The  hull  of  the  Atlantus 
was  cast  in  one  week's  time.  Chemical  experts  were 
engaged  for  research  in  the  composition  of  cement, 
with  the  result  that  instead  of  the  crushed  stone  and 
gravel  usually  used  for  concrete,  a  special  aggregate 
produced  by  the  burning  of  clay  was  adopted,  with 
the  resulting  saving  of  more  than  28  per  cent,  in 
weight.  At  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the  armistice 
there  were  forty-two  ocean-going  concrete  ships  of  near- 
ly 300,000  tons  capacity  under  contract,  and  many  of 
them  under  construction  for  the  Emergency  Fleet 
Corporation;  many  of  these  were  of  7,5oo-tons 
capacity. 

So  successful  did  the  American  development  of  the 
concrete  ship  prove  that  the  British  Admiralty  en- 
couraged Scotch  and  English  shipyards  to  work  along 
similar  lines,  although  no  concrete  craft  built  or  laid 
down  up  to  the  close  of  the  war  approximated  in 
size  even  the  smallest  of  the  American-built  ships  of 
this  material. 

To  put  a  5,ooo-ton  ship  together  requires  about 
450,000  rivets;  a  g,5oo-ton  ship  requires  from  600,000 
to  700,000  rivets.  Every  rivet  is  a  possible  source  of 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       185 

weakness;  every  rivet -hole  a  possible  point  of  leakage. 
Ships  have  been  known  to  scrape  bottom  and  come 
off  the  bar  uninjured  except  that  they  had  sheared 


THE   "PALO  ALTO,"  FIRST  CONCRETE  SHIP  OF  ITS  SI7E;  IT  IS  OF   7,5OO 
DEAD-WEIGHT-TON  CAPACITY 

off  the  rivet  heads  holding  the  bottom  plates  in  place, 
and  the  bottoms  literally  dropped  out  of  them  on 
reaching  deep  water.  For  this  reason  the  bottom 
rivets  on  battle-ships  and  many  other  naval  craft 


186      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

are  countersunk,  so  that  the  heads  are  flush  with  the 
plates.  Moreover,  the  rivets  in  a  9 ^co-ton  ship 
weigh  500  tons,  and  if  they  could  be  eliminated  the 
ship  could  carry  500  tons  more  cargo. 

These  are  among  the  considerations  that  led  engi- 
neers and  electrical  experts,  early  in  America's  program 
of  ship  construction,  to  study  the  problem  of  building 
steel  ships  by  welding  the  plates  together  electrically. 
Electric  welding  is  a  distinctly  American  invention. 
Prior  to  the  war  it  had  gained  an  important  place  in 
many  industries.  It  was  obvious  that  if  it  could  be 
applied  successfully  to  ship  construction,  making  the 
entire  ship  actually  one  solid  piece  of  steel  instead  of 
a  large  number  of  pieces  fastened  together  by  rivets, 
there  would  be  an  enormous  gain  in  strength  and 
security,  possibly  in  time  of  construction  and  of  labor 
cost.  Mr.  A.  J.  Mason,  of  Chicago,  Consulting  En- 
gineer for  the  United  States  Shipping  Board,  whose 
previous  inventions  had  given  him  a  high  standing 
among  marine  engineers,  and  Prof.  Comfort  A.  Adams, 
of  the  faculty  of  Harvard  University  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts Institute  of  Technology,  chairman  of  the 
Electrical  Engineering  section  of  the  National  Re- 
search Council  and  president  of  the  American  Insti- 
tute of  Electrical  Engineers,  were  appointed  on  the 
Electric  Consulting  Committee  by  the  Emergency 
Fleet  Corporation,  to  investigate  and  propose  methods 
of  applying  this  process  to  ship  construction.  Sev- 
eral years  before  the  war,  a  steel  tugboat  60  feet  long 
was  built  at  Ashtabula,  Ohio,  by  the  electric  process. 
This  was  the  first  electrically  welded  vessel  of  any 
size  built  in  the  world.  In  June,  1918,  there  was 
launched  in  England  a  275-ton  barge  built  by  the 
same  process,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1918  work  was 
begun  at  the  -yards  of  the  Federal  Shipbuilding  Cor- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      187 


LAUNCHING    THE 


PALO    ALTO,        A     7,500-TON     CONCRETE     SHIP,     AT 
OAKLAND,   CALIFORNIA 


poration  at  Kearney,  New  Jersey,  on  a  42 -foot  mid- 
ship section  for  a  Q,6oo-ton  ship  fastened  together  by 
electric  spot  welding  instead  of  by  rivets. 

There  are  two  principal  methods  of  electric  welding. 
The  "arc"  welding  process  consists  of  bringing  a 
wire  about  one-eighth  of  an  inch  in  diameter  into 
contact  with  the  metal  to  be  welded  at  the  point 
where  it  is  desired  to  join  the  two  parts.  A  powerful 


ONE   OF  THE  3,OOO-TON  CONCRETE    SHIPS   BUILT  AT  BRUNSWICK,  GEOR- 
GIA,  BY  THE    EMERGENCY   FLEET  CORPORATION 


i88      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

electric  current  is  passed  through  both  the  wire  and 
the  metal  to  be  welded.  The  wire  is  then  pulled  away 
from  the  work  and  the  electric  current,  jumping  the 
gap,  forms  the  arc  and  generates  heat  sufficient  to 
melt  the  end  of  the  wire  and  fuse  the  surface  of  the 
metal  parts,  The  molten  metal  from  the  wire  is 
deposited  in  the  joint  and  fills  it  up,  becoming  an 
integral  part  of  the  plates  or  beams. 

It  was  by  the  use  of  the  arc-welding  process  that 
the  German  ships  taken  over  by  the  United  States 
government  on  our  participation  in  the  war  were  re- 
paired and  made  useful  at  the  end.  Before  surrender- 
ing the  ships,  the  German  crews  cracked  the  cylinders 
of  the  engines,  chiseled  off  the  heads  of  rivets  holding 
plates  to  frames,  bent  the  piston  rods,  plugged  up 
boiler  flues,  and  in  a  hundred  ways  attempted  to 
make  it  impossible  for  the  ships  to  put  to  sea.  They 
openly  boasted  that  they  had  done  such  damage  that 
the  Yankees  could  never  repair  them.  They  honestly 
believed  that  only  German  workmen  in  German  ship- 
yards could  ever  make  these  German  ships  seaworthy 
again.  But  in  less  than  six  months  every  one  of  the 
German  ships,  from  the  huge  Vaterland,  renamed  the 
Leviathan,  down  to  the  smallest  freighter,  had  been 
completely  repaired,  and  in  most  cases  the  machinery 
was  stronger  and  better  than  before.  Cracked  cylin- 
ders were  made  whole  by  the  arc-welding  process, 
which  makes  the  joints  stronger  than  the  original 
metal,  and  at  a  minimum  of  cost  in  money  and  in 
time  America  had  at  command  a  huge  fleet  of  pas- 
senger- and  freight-ships  which  had  once  flown  the 
German  flag. 

The  other  method  of  electric  welding  is  known  as 
"spot"  welding.  This  is  purely  an  American  process, 
and  is  applied  to  heavy  plate-work.  By  means  of  a 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      189 


LAUNCHING  A  CONCRETE  SHIP 

One  of  the  3,ooo-ton  stone  craft  built  for  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation  at 
Brunswick,  Georgia. 

powerful  clamp  exerting  a  pressure  of  about  twenty- 
five  tons  the  plates  are  secured  together  and  an 
electric  current  passed  through  them  at  the  point  of 
highest  pressure.  The  heat  actually  melts  the  two 
plates  together.  This  is  just  like  riveting,  except  that 
there  is  no  punching  of  holes  and  there  are  no  rivets. 
Instead  of  being  continuous,  this  welding  is  done  in 
spots,  and  is  consequently  known  as  "spot"  welding. 


190      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

It  takes  about  fifteen  seconds  to  weld  two  ship- 
plates  together  at  each  spot,  and  after  considerable 
experimenting  with  the  method  devised  by  Mr. 
Mason,  Professor  Adams  reported  that  practically 
everything  done  on  a  ship  by  rivets  could  be  done 
by  means  of  spot  welding.  Portable  spot-welders  for 
use  in  fastening  plates  to  frames  were  devised,  but 
the  natural  field  for  spot  welding  is  in  the  fabrication- 
shop,  where  stationary  spot-welders  can  be  employed. 

One  great  advantage  of  welding  over  riveting  is 
that  while  the  work  of  riveting  required  great  phys- 
ical strength,  welding  can  be  done  by  women  as  well 
as  by  men.  Even  one-armed  men  can  do  electric 
welding.  At  Hog  Island,  where  an  electric-welding 
class  was  established,  one  of  the  first  pupils  was  a 
woman,  Miss  Sara  A.  Irwin,  who  took  up  the  work 
and  did  actual  ship  construction. 

No  record  of  Yankee  ingenuity  as  applied  to  war- 
time ship-building  would  be  complete  without  some 
mention  of  the  unsinkable  ship,  the  Lucia,  which 
was  sunk  by  a  German  submarine.  Paradoxical  as 
it  may  seem,  it  was  the  verdict  of  shipping  experts 
that  the  Lucia,  although  sunk,  was  a  successful  demon- 
stration of  a  method  of  making  ships  unsinkable! 
The  Lucia  was  a  steel  ship  418  feet  long,  54  feet  beam, 
with  a  dead- weight  capacity  of  10,650  tons.  Inside 
the  Lucia  between  the  ribs  or  side-frames  and  in  the 
spaces  between  the  deck-beams  were  fitted  6,000 
water-tight  wooden  boxes,  each  3  feet  long,  2  feet 
wide,  and  i  foot  deep.  Approximately  the  same  num- 
ber of  larger  boxes  were  fitted  into  cargo  space  that 
would  otherwise  be  left  empty  when  the  ship  was 
carrying  a  full  cargo  of  coal.  These  buoyancy  boxes 
weighed  1,400  tons,  but  with  the  boxes  in  place  she 
was  able  to  carry  a  cargo  of  8,179  tons. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      191 

The  theory  of  the  buoyancy  boxes  was  that,  no 
matter^how  large  a  hole  was  blown  in  the  hull,  the 
ship  would  still  float.  On  the  evening  of  October 
17,  1918,  the  Lucia  was  eastward  bound  across  the 
Atlantic  with  four  other  vessels,  but  without  a  con- 
voy. A  torpedo  struck  squarely  in  the  engine-room 
section  amidships,  killing  four  men  and  injuring 
several  others.  The  Lucia  remained  afloat  for  twenty- 


WOMEN   SHIPYARD   WORKERS  LEARNING  ELECTRO   WELDING 

As  the  war  ended,  the  method  of  fastening  steel  ships  together  by  spot  welding  in- 
stead of  riveting  had  just  been  developed  to  the  point  where  its  usefulness  was  proved. 


four  hours.  The  engines  having  been  demolished,  the 
vessel  could  make  no  headway,  and  wallowed  in  a 
gradually  rising  sea.  In  the  afternoon  of  the  follow- 
ing day  the  rolling  of  the  ship  became  so  violent  that 
the  deck-load  of  motor-trucks  broke  loose.  The  five- 
ton  trucks,  threshing  about  on  the  deck,  endangered 
the  lives  of  the  crew,  so  that  the  vessel  was  abandoned 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  following  afternoon,  though  still 
afloat  and  showing  few  signs  of  sinking.  Several  of 
the  trucks  went  over  the  side,  giving  more  room  for 


i92      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  others  to  thresh  about,  and  finally  two  of  them 
smashed  through  the  deck  structure,  tearing  open  the 
hatches  and  permitting  water  to  flow  into  all  the 
holds.  It  was  not  until  this  that  the  Lucia  sank. 
But  for  the  damage  done  by  the  motor-trucks,  it  is 
considered  doubtful  that  she  would  have  sunk  at  all. 


XI 

THE  "EAGLE"  BOATS 

'""TRULY  and  typically  American  in  both  conception 
A  and  execution,  the  Eagle  boats  built  for  the 
navy  by  Henry  Ford  rank  very  high  in  the  list  of 
examples  of  Yankee  ingenuity  a.nd  resourcefulness  as 
applied  to  war  problems.  After  two  lengthy  and 
detailed  inspections  of  the  Ford  ship-building  plant, 
from  the  raw  steel  to  the  finished  ships,  I  came  away 
not  at  all  sure  which  was  the  most  amazing  aspect 
of  the  whole  business,  the  Eagle  boat  itself,  with  its 
radical  departures  from  every  accepted  canon  and 
tenet  of  naval  architecture,  the  audacity  of  the  con- 
ception of  building  ships  by  the  same  program  and 
method  that  produces  the  ubiquitous  Ford  car,  or 
the  truly  miraculous  speed  with  which  the  huge  ship 
factory  in  which  they  were  being  made  had  arisen, 
Aladdin-like,  on  the  banks  of  the  River  Rouge. 

The  Eagle  boat  was  first  thought  of  in  January, 
1918.  Mr.  Ford  began  to  make  plans  for  the  construc- 
tion of  the  boats  and  the  erection  of  the  factory  for 
making  them  in  February.  I  first  visited  the  plant 
in  the  first  week  of  June;  it  was  completed  in  every 
detail  except  the  launching  mechanism,  and  half  a 
dozen  ships  were  in  process  of  construction.  And 
they  are  real  ships;  any  vessel  more  than  200  feet 
long  is  entitled  to  be  called  a  ship,  and  the  Eagle, 
boats  are  longer  than  that ;  they  are  within  2  5  feet  or 


i94      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

so  of  being  as  long  as  the  standard  3,5oo-ton  wooden 
ships  built  for  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation, 
although,  of  course,  their  tonnage  is  very  much  less. 
Comparison  of  the  Eagle  boats,  however,  should  be 
with  naval  rather  than  with  merchant  craft.  They 
are  not  so  large  as  the  new  destroyers,  but  they  are 
a  good  bit  larger  than  the  old  familiar  type  of  destroyer 
that  formed  the  backbone  of  our  "mosquito  fleet" 
before  we  went  into  the  war. 

The  Eagle  boat  is,  in  fact,  a  destroyer  without 
torpedo-tubes  and  with  less  engine  power  and,  con- 
sequently, less  speed  than  the  new  high-powered  little 
bull-terriers  of  the  sea,  with  their  27,000  horse-power 
and  thirty-knot  gait.  It  has  speed  enough,  though, 
to  run  circles  around  the  fastest  submarine  cruiser, 
running  either  submerged  or  awash,  and  carries 
exactly  the  same  guns  and  depth-bombs  that  the 
destroyers  carry,  which  experience  has  proved  suf- 
ficient to  "get "  any  submarine  that  shows  a  periscope 
within  range.  The  Eagle  boat  is  not  so  pretty  to 
look  at  as  a  destroyer,  but  as  the  only  people  con- 
cerned with  its  appearance  were  expected  to  get  their 
view  of  it  through  a  periscope,  the  matter  of  looks 
was  distinctly  a  secondary  consideration  in  its  de- 
signing. 

Historically,  the  Eagle  boat  is  a  development  of 
the  "chaser,"  the  new  class  of  naval  craft  brought 
into  being  by  the  menace  of  the  U-boat.  The 
"chaser,"  though  first  introduced  to  public  notice 
by  the  British  navy,  is  distinctly  an  American  craft. 
When  the  submarines  first  began  to  menace  the  British 
coast  everything  that  would  float  was  commandeered 
into  the  submarine  patrol  service;  motor-launches 
and  yachts  were  equipped  with  guns  and  sent  to  sea 
in  pursuit  of  Fritz.  This  method  of  defense  proved 


i96      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

so  effective  that  orders  were  given  to  an  American 
ship-building  company  for  550  specially  designed 
motor  craft,  officially  known  as  "submarine  chasers," 
and  until  the  new  British  destroyer  program  was 
substantially  completed  and  the  American  mosquito 
fleet  was  able  to  supplement  it,  which  two  events 
occurred  about  the  same  time,  these  "chasers"  were 
almost  the  main  reliance  against  the  U-boat. 

These  8 5 -footers,  however,  proved  frightfully  "wet" 
boats  in  any  kind  of  heavy  weather  and  not  large 
enough  to  cover  the  enlarged  cruising  area  made 
necessary  by  the  appearance  of  larger  German  sub- 
marines. One  of  the  first  things  our  Navy  Depart- 
ment did  when  we  entered  the  war  was  to  place  orders 
for  a  large  number  of  "chasers,"  of  a  similar  type, 
but  twenty -five  feet  longer.  These  "hundred-and- 
tens,"  as  the  navy  refers  to  them  (officially  the  "C" 
class),  gave  a  good  account  of  themselves  on  inshore 
duty  about  the  British  Islands  and  in  patrol  service 
on  our  own  coasts,  but  they  were  subject  to  the  many 
limitations  of  the  motor-boat,  and  it  quickly  became 
apparent  that  something  bigger  was  needed. 

The  "hundred-and-tens"  were  built  of  wood,  chiefly 
at  Lake  ports,  partly  because  they  could  be  built 
more  quickly  of  wood  and  partly  because  the  steel 
shipyard  capacity  of  the  whole  nation  was  needed 
for  merchant-craft  and  larger  naval  vessels.  What 
was  needed,  however,  was  a  steel  vessel  so  designed 
that  its  component  parts  would  not  require  the  diver- 
sion of  any  steel  production  needed  for  other  war 
purposes,  big  enough  for  any  weather,  fast  enough 
to  catch  any  submarine,  and  a  manufacturer  who 
would  undertake  to  produce  it  in  quantities  faster 
than  ships  of  any  size  were  ever  built  before.  If 
the  manufacturer  couldn't  be  found,  the  ships  couldn't 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      197 


THE   KEEL   AND   GARBOARD   STRAKES  OF   AN  EAGLE    BOAT   IN   PLACE 

be  built,  and  for  a  time  it  looked  as  if  the  project 
would  have  to  be  abandoned  or  laid  aside.  Then 
Henry  Ford  dropped  in  to  see  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy  one  day.  Their  conversation  ran  somewhat 
like  this,  it  is  said: 

"I  wonder  if  you  couldn't  ^build  these  new  boats 


198      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

for  us,"  suggested  the  Secretary.  Mr.  Ford  looked 
at  the  plans,  and  said  that  he  could. 

"How  fast  can  you  build  them?"  inquired  Mr. 
Daniels. 

"How  fast  do  you  want  them?"  asked  Mr.  Ford. 

"Begin  deliveries  next  summer  and  give  us  the 
whole  two  hundred  by  this  time  next  year!"  sug- 
gested Mr.  Daniels. 

That  was  in  February.  Mr.  Ford  thought  a  minute. 
It  meant  constructing  a  complete  plant,  buildings, 
machinery  and  all,  from  the  ground  up,  in  less  than 
four  months;  inventing  ways  to  fabricate  and  assemble 
the  parts  of  the  new  boats;  designing  and  construct- 
ing special  tools  to  do  the  job  on  a  scale  that  would 
make  it  possible  to  turn  out  a  ship  a  day  after  the 
plant  got  into  operation.  Most  manufacturers  would 
have  wanted  a  year  to  get  ready  to  begin  making  boats ; 
several  had,  in  fact,  looked  at  the  plans  and  speci- 
fications, shaken  their  heads,  and  declined.  Mr.  Ford 
had  never  built  any  ships,  but  he  had  built  four 
thousand  automobiles  a  day,  and  he  has  absolutely 
no  sense  of  any  limitation  to  the  ability  of  his  or- 
ganization to  do  anything  he  wants  it  to  do. 

"I'll  do  it,"  he  said. 

The  design  of  the  Eagle  boat  was  worked  out  in 
the  Navy  Department.  It  took  only  three  weeks  to 
make  the  plans,  build  a  model,  and  test  it  for  stability 
and  speed  in  the  testing-tank  at  the  Washington 
Navy- Yard,  and  to  draw  up  specifications  for  the 
construction  of  the  ships.  In  its  lines  the  Eagle  boat 
(that  is  the  official  designation  of  the  entire  class) 
does  not  exactly  resemble  anything  else  that  floats. 
Viewed  from  above,  it  is  much  more  like  a  flounder 
than  a  mackerel;  the  midship  cross-section  bears  a 
strong  family  likeness  to  the  lines  of  a  canal  barge.  Its 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 


199 


stern  is  uncompromisingly  square  and  blunt.  Save 
for  the  curve  of  the  bilge  and  the  necessary  "fairing" 
of  the  horizontal  plan,  it  is  composed  entirely  of 
straight  lines  and  plane  surfaces.  But  the  bow  tapers 
down  to  a  razor-like  stem  that  looks  as  if  it  could 
slice  through  a  submarine  at  a  pinch  and  be  none  the 
worse  for  it,  and  there  is  a  fine  sweep  to  the  lines 
aft  that  gives  all  the  speed  the  craft  is  ever  likely 
to  require,  flat-bottomed  and  awkward  though  it 
looks  out  of  water.  Utility  was  the  first  and  ruling 
consideration,  low-cost  production  the  second,  with 
comfort  and  beauty  merely  incidental,  if  they  came 
into  consideration  at  all. 

With  a  length  of  204  feet,  the  Eagle  boats  easily 


HULL  OF   EAGLE   BOAT   ALMOST   FINISHED 


200      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

passed  through  the  Welland  Canal  locks,  which  will 
take  ships  up  to  230  feet  long.  But  the  Eagles'  beam 
and  draught  were  purposely  made  small  enough  to 
permit  them  to  travel  to  seaboard  by  way  of  the  New 
York  State  Barge  Canal,  as  did  the  "C"  boats.  The 
Barge  Canal  locks  are  310  feet  long,  45  feet  wide,  and 
have  10  feet  of  water  over  the  sills.  The  Eagles 
draw  8  feet  when  fully  equipped  and  ready  for  sea, 
and  they  have  a  beam  of  considerably  less  than  the 
width  of  the  locks. 

The  motive  power  of  the  Eagle  boat  is  a  steam- 
turbine  geared  to  the  propeller  shaft,  on  which  is 
mounted  a  single  three-bladed  screw  of  rather  steep 
pitch.  Crude-oil  fuel  is  used  to  generate  the  steam, 
and  the  tank  capacity  of  the  Eagles  is  sufficient  for 
a  steaming  radius  of  at  least  the  distance  across 
the  Atlantic.  Mr.  Ford  built  the  engines  in  the  same 
Detroit  factory  where  he  builds  automobiles,  in  an 
addition  to  that  ninety-six-acre  shop,  constructed 
for  this  particular  work.  They  are  of  a  somewhat 
different  type  from  the  turbine-engines  generally 
used  in  marine  installations,  and  will  generate  in 
the  neighborhood  of  3,000  horse-power.  Turbines 
were  adopted  for  the  Eagle  boats,  as  they  have  been 
for  the  new  destroyers  and  many  of  the  ships  of  the 
new  merchant  fleet,  because  they  occupy  less  space 
for  the  same  horse-power  than  reciprocating  engines, 
are  simpler  and  quicker  to  build,  and  take  very  much 
less  metal. 

Only  the  war  emergency  could  have  made  it  possible 
to  put  into  execution  the  daring  project  of  building  a 
fighting-ship  entirely  out  of  sheet-steel  stampings, 
but  that  is  exactly  what  was  done  in  the  Eagle  boats. 
Not  that  it  is  not  a  perfectly  sound  and  sane  way  to 
build  a  ship,  from  the  viewpoint  of  an  engineer  or 


WHERE   THE   EAGLE   BOATS   WERE   BUILT 

The  huge  "  Crystal  Palace,"  a  third  of  a  mile  long,  on  the  bank  of  the  River 
Rouge,  near  Detroit. 


POWER   PLANTS   OF   EAGLE   BOATS 

Some  of   the  2,soo-horse-power  steam-turbines  built  in  the  Ford  plant  ready  for 
installation. 


202      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

a  manufacturer,  but  it  had  never  been  done  that  way 
before,  and  in  the  navy  it  is  extremely  difficult,  in 
peace  times,  to  do  anything  except  in  the  way  in 
which  it  has  always  been  done.  In  the  Eagle  boat, 
however,  there  is  not  only  an  entirely  new  type  of 
naval  craft,  built  on  entirely  new  lines,  but  the 
method  of  construction  is  radically  different  from 
anything  that  has  ever  been  attempted  before. 

There  is  not  a  forging  or  a  rolled  beam  or  shape  in 
the  whole  ship.  Everything — keel,  floors,  frames, 
beams  and  angles — is  pressed  from  sheet  metal,  cold, 
by  means  of  automatic  machinery  that  cuts  every 
piece  to  an  exact  pattern,  then  punches  the  rivet- 
holes,  thirty  or  forty  at  a  time,  and  bends  every  part 
to  its  precise  final  shape.  Building  a  ship  by  this 
plan  is  merely  a  matter  of  placing  numbered  parts 
together  and  riveting  them  fast;  it  takes  no  more 
skill  in  the  actual  construction  work  than  can  be  im- 
parted to  an  ordinarily  handy  laborer  in  a  couple  of 
weeks'  instruction.  And  the  builder  of  this  sort  of 
ship  does  not  have  to  wait  on  half  a  dozen  steel 
mills  for  special  shapes  or  parts;  all  he  asks  is  to  have 
a  sufficient  continuous  supply  of  standard-sized  steel 
sheets  delivered  at  his  back  door,  and  the  finished 
ships  can  be  turned  out  of  the  front  door  as  rapidly 
as  automatic  machinery  can  fabricate  the  raw  steel 
into  the  necessary  parts. 

Precisely  and  literally,  that  is  the  way  Mr.  Ford 
built  the  Eagle  boats,  by  taking  in  steel  plates  at 
one  door  and  turning  out  finished  ships  at  another 
door,  for  these  craft  were  constructed  entirely  in- 
doors, in  one  huge  room,  big  enough  to  house  twenty- 
four  of  them  at  once  and  still  leave  so  much  space 
that  one  had  to  walk  for  an  appreciable  part  of  a 
minute  to  get  from  one  ship  to  the  next ! 


THE  ROLLING  PLATFORM  THAT  CARRIED  THE  EAGLE  BOATS  FROM  THE 
FACTORY  TO  THE  LAUNCHING  ELEVATOR 


NOTHING  COULD  BE  SIMPLER  THAN  THE  METHOD  OF  BUILDING  THE 
EAGLE  BOATS   - 


204      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

I  do  not  think  it  possible  to  do  justice  in  words  to 
the  gigantic  building  in  which  two  dozen  Eagle  boats 
were  made  at  one  time.  Where  it  stands  was  utterly 
vacant  land  in  February.  In  the  following  June  the 
visitor  approached  a  building  which,  seen  from  the 
highway  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away,  looked  big  enough, 
in  all  conscience,  but  which,  as  one  drew  nearer, 
took  on  the  aspect  of  a  mammoth  crystal  palace,  its 
glass-inclosed  sides  and  roof  suggesting  something 
ethereal  and  phantasmagoric,  as  if  it  might  dissolve 
into  thin  air  if  one  should  happen  to  utter  the  right 
magic  formula.  I  could  think  of  nothing,  as  I  ap- 
proached it,  but  Keats's 

Charmed  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

Stretching  its  length  a  third  of  a  mile  along  the 
banks  of  the  River  Rouge,  this  steel,  glass  and  con- 
crete building,  350  feet  wide  and  100  high,  covers 
more  than  thirteen  acres  in  one  room.  It  is  so  big 
that,  looking  from  one  end  of  it  at  a  2oo-foot  ship  at 
the  other  end  is  like  looking  at  a  figure  on  the  stage 
through  the  wrong  end  of  an  opera-glass.  There  were 
six  Eagle  boats  under  construction  the  first  day  I 
visited  this  plant,  and  for  a  full  minute  after  I  entered 
the  door  and  looked  around  I  thought  the  place  was 
empty!  Then  I  spied  the  nearest  of  the  ships  and 
walked  interminably  across  acres  of  floor  until  I 
reached  it.  With  more  than  twice  as  many  ships 
in  the  place,  a  couple  of  weeks  later,  there  was  still 
that  compelling  sense  of  emptiness,  so  enormous  were 
the  spaces,  so  expansive  the  areas,  in  this  titanic 
ship-factory.  And  these  ships,  it  must  be  remembered, 
are  longer  than  a  city  block,  bigger  than  many  an 
ocean-going  craft  that  is  counted  a  fair  ship  even  in 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      205 

these  days,  many  times  bigger  than  the  caravels  of 
Columbus.  Seen  in  their  vast  environment,  how- 
ever, they  looked  like  toys  until  one  got  close  enough 
to  look  up  at  the  men  at  work  high  above,  then  to 


PUNCHING  THE   PLATES   FOR   EAGLE   BOATS 


climb  up  on  the  deck  and  realize  that  this  was  no 
plaything,  but  a  real,  man-sized  ship  of  war. 

If  Mr.  Ford  had  done  nothing  else  than  to  put  up 
this  single  building  in  less  than  four  months,  he  might 
have  regarded  it,  in  ordinary  times,  as  something  to 
brag  about;  as  a  war  measure,  however,  it  was  just 


206      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

one  of  hundreds  of  similar  marvels  that  were  per- 
formed all  over  the  country.  It  was  the  things  being 
done  inside  the  building  that  counted.  And  the 
visitor  who  failed  to  be  impressed  with  the  idea  of 
tremendous  achievement  when  he  had  seen  and 
studied  the  system  and  method  by  which  the  building 
of  the  Eagle  boat  moved  with  orderly  progress  from 
the  railroad  cars  that  brought  the  steel  plates,  at 
one  end,  to  the  finished  ships,  at  the  other,  must 
have  been  incapable  of  being  impressed  by  anything 
this  side  of  the  supernatural. 

Here  at  one  end  was  a  shed  under  which  the  steel 
was  stacked  in  orderly  piles.  The  thinness  of  these 
plates  impressed  one,  though  they  are  actually  only 
a  trifle  thinner  than  the  plates  of  regular  destroyers. 
They  are  not  built  to  withstand  a  shell,  these  Eagles ; 
one  realizes,  of  course,  upon  reflection,  that  neither 
are  the  destroyers.  Only  cruisers  and  battle-ships 
are  armored.  Farther  along,  upon  a  big,  open  floor, 
men  laid  down  patterns  on  sheets  of  steel  and  marked 
them  for  the  cutting-  and  punching-machines.  Big 
stamping-presses  bent  certain  of  the  sheets  and  strips 
into  angles  and  channels.  As  the  visitor  moved 
toward  the  main  building  he  passed  an  inclosure  in 
which  there  were  rows  upon  rows  of  draftsmen  work- 
ing at  their  desks.  Close  to  the  door  were  the  punches, 
making  thirty  or  forty  rivet-holes,  each  at  a  point 
precisely  determined  in  advance,  in  the  edge  of  a 
steel  plate.  As  one  entered  the  assembling-room  one 
passed  under  a  wide  gallery;  up  above  were  the  offices 
of  the  naval  officers  detailed  to  supervise  and  inspect 
the  construction  of  the  Eagles. 

The  place  is  so  big  that  the  noise  of  a  hundred 
pneumatic  riveting-hammers  going  at  once  made  only 
a  pleasant  sort  of  beelike  droning  unless  one  hap- 


HAULING  THE   EAGLE    BOAT   OUT   OF   THE   SHIP-FACTORY 

In  the  foreground  is  the  rolling  platform  that  carries  the  ship,  with  its  supporting 
trucks,  down  to  the  launching  elevator. 


A   SQUADRON   OF   EAGLE    BOATS   BEING  FITTED   OUT 


208      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

pened  to  be  standing  close  by.  After  the  first  shock 
of  surprise  at  finding  the  plant  so  different  from  what 
had  been  anticipated  was  over,  one  involuntarily 
compared  it  with  a  railroad  station,  not  only  because 
of  its  size,  but  because  of  the  six  lines  of  railroad 
track  running  through  its  length.  There  were  trains 
of  flat-cars,  apparently,  standing  on  three  of  the 
tracks.  On  close  inspection,  however,  what  seemed 
to  be  a  train  proved  to  be  a  single  huge  flat-car  or 
platform,  200  feet  long  and  perhaps  20  feet  wide, 
mounted  on  an  uncountable  number  of  railway  trucks. 
It  was  upon  these  rolling  platforms  that  the  Eagle 
boats  were  built.  As  the  bottom  strake  of  one  was 
being  laid  out  by  the  workmen,  on  the  next  the  floors 
and  frames  were  being  set  up;  on  a  third  platform, 
farther  down  the  same  line  of  rails,  the  shell  plating 
was  being  riveted  on,  so  thin  and  flexible  that  the 
operation  looked  almost  like  hanging  wall-paper.  At 
the  far  end  the  upper  works  of  a  ship  were  being  fin- 
ished, the  deck  had  already  been  riveted  on,  and 
alongside  lay  the  rudder  and  the  propeller,  waiting  for 
the  big  overhead  crane  to  pick  them  up  and  swing 
them  into  place.  On  each  of  the  three  assembling- 
tracks  eight  Eagle  boats  could  be  under  construction 
at  one  time,  twenty-four  in  all,  and  the  work  was  so 
laid  out  that  each  ship  moved  down  the  line  in  orderly 
progression,  as  each  ship  ahead  of  it  was  launched, 
ready  for  the  next  set  of  operations  to  bring  it  one  more 
step  toward  completion. 

Great,  rolling  iron  doors  close  the  openings  at  the 
end  of  each  track.  The  rails  outside  connect  with 
rails  which  are  laid  on  a  big,  heavy-framed  platform 
as  wide  as  a  bay  of  the  building  and  as  long  as  an 
Eagle  boat  itself.  This  platform  is,  in  turn,  mounted 
on  car  wheels,  which  run  on  rails  placed  at  right  angles 


"GOING  DOWN" 

An  Eagle  boat  on  the  hydraulic  elevator  being  lowered  into  the  launching  basin.     As 
the  water  in  the  towers  is  slowly  released  the  ship,  trucks,  platform  and  all, descends. 


ON  THE   ELEVATOR 

The  first  Eagle  boat  being  lowered  into  the  River  Rouge. 


210      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

to  those  running  into  the  building;  these  transverse 
rails  extend  several  hundred  feet  beyond  the  building. 
When  an  Eagle  boat  was  ready  for  launching  a  loco- 
motive hauled  it,  platform,  trucks,  and  all,  out  onto 
this  transfer  table.  That,  in  turn,  was  hauled  across 
until  the  rails  supporting  the  boat  came  opposite  a 
pair  of  rails  that  led  to  another  platform,  apparently 


AN   EAGLE    BOAT   IN   COMMISSION 

These  "Tin  Lizzies  of  the  Sea"  were  built  in  quantities  in  the  same  manner 
as  Ford  cars. 


supported  between  four  great  concrete  pillars.  This 
is  the  launching  elevator.  It  is  an  ordinary  hydraulic 
elevator,  supported  by  four  columns  of  water  inside 
the  concrete  pillars.  The  Eagle  boat's  supporting 
platform  is  rolled  onto  the  elevator,  a  valve  is  opened, 
and  the  descent  into  the  launching  basin  is  easy  and 
simple  and  safe  as  coming  down  from  the  Woolworth 
Tower,  and  doesn't  take  any  longer!  Elevator,  plat- 
form, and  all  continue  to  go  down  until  the  boat 
floats.  Then  the  elevator  brings  the  empty  platform 
back  to  the  main  level  by  hydraulic  power,  the  plat- 
form on  its  trucks  is  shunted  to  the  farther  end  of  the 
building,  and  in  half  an  hour  the  seven  other  Eagle 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      211 

boats  on  this  particular  line  of  track  have  been 
moved  up  a  notch  and  the  platform  is  back  at  the 
end  of  the  line,  ready  to  receive  the  keel  and  bottom 
strake  of  another  Eagle. 

Nothing  could  be  simpler  than  the  whole  process; 
nothing  less  direct  and  machine-like  in  every  detail 
of  its  operation  could  possibly  produce  two  hundred 
U-boat  chasers  like  these  in  a  year's  time.  And,  at 
the  same  time,  nothing  more  spectacular  or  amazing 
than  the  whole  scheme,  from  the  conception  of  the 
Eagle  boat  and  its  method  of  manufacture  to  the 
construction  of  the  plant  and  the  actual  building  of 
the  ships,  was  undertaken  in  the  course  of  our  entire 
preparation  for  war. 

Only  about  sixty  Eagle  boats  were  actually  built, 
as  the  contract  was  canceled  on  the  signing  of  the 
armistice.  The  achievement  stands,  however,  as  per- 
haps the  most  striking  example  of  what  America  can 
do  under  pressure. 


XII 

SOME   YANKEE   TRICKS   IN   UNDERSEA   WARFARE 

IT  is  hardly  going  too  far  to  say  that  the  most  im- 
portant collection  of  scientifically  trained  minds 
ever  assembled  in  one  place  and  set  to  work  upon  a 
single  group  of  related  problems  was  the  organiza- 
tion of  scientists,  inventors,  and  technical  engineers 
gathered  at  the  Navy  Department  in  Washington, 
known  as  the  Naval  Consulting  Board,  headed  by  the 
most  famous  inventor  in  the  world,  Thomas  A.  Edison. 
Very  few  persons  in  the  Navy  Department,  even, 
realized  that  for  practically  the  entire  period  of 
America's  participation  in  the  war  Mr.  Edison  made 
his  personal  headquarters  in  a  room  close  to  that  of 
the  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 

He  spent  almost  all  of  his  time,  day  and  night,  as 
is  his  custom,  working  upon  scientific  and  technical 
problems  which  were  under  consideration  by  the 
Naval  Consulting  Board;  to  his  genius  not  only  as  an 
individual  scientist  and  inventor,  but  as  a  guide  and 
inspiration  to  others,  were  due  many  of  the  devices 
and  methods  adopted  by  our  navy,  both  for  offensive 
and  defensive  purposes,  which  proved  of  immeasurable 
value  in  the  destruction  of  German  submarines  and 
in  keeping  the  German  fleet  bottled  up  at  Wilhelms- 
haven  and  Helgoland. 

Before  the  armistice  was  signed  the  quarters  of  the 


THE  AMERICAN  NAVY  TYPE  OF  AUTOMATIC  DEPTH  SUBMARINE  MINE, 

WITH  BOXLIKE  ANCHOR  THAT  CONTAINS  MECHANISM  THAT  REGULATES 

THE  DEPTH.   HUNDREDS  OF  THOUSANDS  OF  THESE  WERE  LAID  IN  A 

BARRAGE  ACROSS  THE  NORTH  SEA 

15 


2i4      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Naval  Consulting  Board  and  its  staff  of  technicians 
had  expanded  until  they  occupied  almost  an  entire 
wing  of  the  gigantic  new  Navy  Building  in  Washing- 
ton, that  wonderful  piece  of  solid  concrete  construc- 
tion containing  forty-three  acres  of  floor  space,  which 
was  built,  figuratively  speaking,  overnight,  by  the 
Navy  Bureau  of  Yards  and  Docks.  Many  of  the 
scientific  discoveries  and  inventions  which  had  their 
practical  applications  developed  by  the  Naval  Con- 
sulting Board  are  still  secrets  and  will  continue  to  be 
secrets,  revealed  only  to  the  officers  and  men  charged 
with  responsibility  for  their  operation. 

Our  army  is  now  demobilized;  its  military  activi- 
ties are  terminated  for  the  time  being  at  least,  and,  in 
the  hope  of  every  American,  permanently.  But  even 
a  League  of  Nations  cannot  relieve  a  country  with  a 
seacoast  like  ours  from  the  necessity  of  policing  our 
own  shores;  a  League  of  Nations,  indeed,  may  con- 
ceivably require  America  to  participate  in  the  or- 
ganization, maintenance,  and  operation  of  an  inter- 
national sea  police  that  will  call  for  even  greater 
naval  resources  than  the  signing  of  the  armistice 
found  us  possessed  of,  efficient  and  extensive  as  those 
were. 

So  while  the  concern  of  the  public,  other  than  mere 
curiosity,  with  the  scientific  achievements  of  the  army 
is  centered  chiefly  and  properly  upon  the  possible 
application  of  these  technical  developments  to  the 
pursuits  of  peace,  the  matter  of  our  naval  strength  is 
one  of  continuing  interest  in  peace  as  well  as  in  war. 
So  even  though  there  may  be  little  or  no  direct  ap- 
plication to  industry  and  commerce  resulting  from 
the  scientific  researches  and  developments  of  the 
Naval  Consulting  Board,  some  of  these  secrets  which 
can  now  be  disclosed  have  an  interest  and  importance 


2i6      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

extending  beyond  their  usefulness  in  the  war  which 
terminated  on  November  n,  1918. 

Heretofore  all  wars  have  been  fought  on  the  surface 
of  the  land  or  sea.  In  the  Great  War,  for  the  first 
time,  men  fought  miles  above  the  earth  and  hundreds 
of  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  sea.  And  just  as  the 
submarine  itself  was  a  Yankee  invention  in  the  first 
place,  so  it  was  Yankee  inventions  that  played  the 
most  important  part  in  the  war  against  the  sub- 
marine, after  Germany  had  initiated  the  ruthless  use 
of  the  Unterseeboot,  the  German  word  for  submarine 
which  we  shortened  in  English  to  "U-boat."  It  was 
Yankee  ingenuity,  too,  that  made  it  possible  literally 
to  build  a  fence  across  the  entrance  to  the  North  Sea 
that  effectually  prevented  the  German  navy  from 
coming  out  into  the  high  seas,  had  it  shown  any  in- 
clination to  do  so. 

The  submarine  depth  bomb,  devised  by  the  United 
States  navy's  experts,  proved  the  most  potent  of  all 
weapons  against  the  U-boat.  The  depth  charge  itself 
looks  like  nothing  so  much  as  an  ordinary  galvanized 
ash-can.  It  is  a  cylinder,  30  inches  high  and  20 
inches  in  diameter.  It  contains  in  its  interior  about 
75  pounds  of  trinitroxylol,  an  explosive  even  more 
powerful  than  the  famous  TNT. 

The  mechanism  by  which  this  explosive  is  set  off 
is  simple  and  sturdy  enough  to  be  practically  fool- 
proof, and  yet  at  the  same  time  can  be  regulated  with 
such  delicacy  of  adjustment  that  the  charge  will  in- 
evitably explode  at  precisely  the  predetermined  depth, 
as  indicated  by  a  scale  and  an  adjustable  pointer  on 
the  exterior  of  the  bomb.  Water  is  not  admitted  to 
the  interior  until  the  external  pressure  has  reached 
a  point  which  depends  upon  the  depth  below  the  sur- 
face. The  instant  this  depth  is  reached,  however, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      217 

whether  it  be  30  feet  or  300  feet,  the  explosion  oc- 
curs, and  so  precise  and  accurate  is  the  operation  of 
the  depth  charge  that  there  is  not  recorded  a  single 
failure  to  perform  exactly  as  planned. 

Depth  bombs  are  fired  in  pairs  from  the  Y-gun. 
In  the  beginning  of  their  usefulness  they  were  simply 


AS  THE  DEPTH  BOMB  EXPLODES 

A  Yankee  destroyer  using  the  "ash-can  and  tar-barrel"  method  of  "getting"  sub- 
marines.   As  the  depth  charge  is  thrown  over  the  craft  moves  away  at  full  speed, 
sending  up  a  smoke-screen  to  hide  its  movements  from  the  enemy. 

dropped  overboard  from  the  stern  of  a  destroyer  or 
submarine-chaser,  which  immediately  proceeded  to 
go  away  from  there  at  full  speed.  By  means  of  the 
Y-gun,  two  depth  charges  at  once  are  tossed  over- 
board, striking  the  water  a  sufficient  distance  from 
the  vessel  to  minimize  the  danger,  although  at  no 
time  do  naval  men  care  to  linger  long  in  the  neigh- 
borhood where  a  depth  charge  has  just  been  dropped. 
The  Y-gun  looks  like  nothing  so  much  as  the  familiar 
"Siamese  coupler"  seen  in  front  of  tall  buildings,  to 
enable  the  fire  department  to  attach  two  lines  of  hose 
to  a  single  standpipe.  It  is  merely  a  gun  with  two 


218      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

barrels,  set  at  an  angle  of  about  90  degrees  to  each 
other,  both  barrels  being  fired  by  a  single  charge 
which  is  placed  in  a  chamber  in  the  neck  of  the  Y. 
The  depth  charge  is  laid  on  its  side  in  a  cradle  shaped 
to  hold  it  in  position,  the  cradle  having  attached  to 
it  a  stem  or  arbor  which  exactly  fits  the  bore  of  the 
Y-gun. 

The  powder  charge  used  to  fire  the  Y-gun  is  not 
so  great  as  that  used  in  the  ordinary  one-pounder 
naval  quick-firing  gun.  Nothing  could  be  simpler 
and,  as  demonstrated  by  the  experience  of  our  de- 
stroyers and  submarine-chasers,  all  of  which  are 
equipped  with  the  Y-gun  and  a  supply  of  depth 
charges,  nothing  could  be  more  effective  for  the  de- 
struction of  submarines,  once  their  presence  has  been 
detected,  than  the  depth  charge.  From  the  view- 
point of  military  effectiveness  the  depth  charge  and 
the  Y-gun  probably  rank  first  among  the  scientific 
achievements  of  the  Naval  Consulting  Board. 

Locating  submarines  from  surface  craft  was,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  the  most  difficult  piece  of  de- 
tective work  ever  undertaken.  Finding  the  proverbial 
"needle  in  a  haystack"  is  child's  play  compared  with 
it.  The  problem  was  finally  solved,  and  solved  so 
successfully  that,  had  the  war  lasted  another  six 
months,  it  is  the  belief  of  American  and  British  naval 
experts  that  every  last  remaining  German  submarine 
would  have  been  destroyed  had  it  ever  ventured  out 
from  its  sheltered  harbor. 

Up  to  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the 
war  no  satisfactory  method  had  been  devised  by  the 
Allies  for  determining  the  presence  or  location  of  a 
submarine.  The  experts  of  the  Naval  Consulting 
Board  appointed  a  special  committee,  early  in  1917, 
to  consider  this  problem  and  devise  methods  of  solv- 


YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       219 

ing  it.  Two  groups  of  engineers  and  scientists  set 
to  work  on  it  simultaneously,  one  group  working  at 
the  submarine  base  at  New  London,  Connecticut, 
and  the  other  at  Nahant,  Massachusetts.  A  Boston 
concern,  the  Submarine  Signal  Company,  had  sev- 
eral years  before  perfected  a  method  of  signaling  from 
ship  to  shore  and  from  shore  to  ship  by  the  transmis- 


THE  "BUSINESS  END"  OF  THE  SUBMARINE-DETECTOR 

Each  of  the  shell-shaped  attachments  contains  a  microphone  which  picks  up  sound 

waves  traveling  through  the  water  and  transmits  them  to  telephone  receivers  inside 

the  ship.     The  picture  shows  the  device  attached  to  an  American  submarine. 

sion  of  sound  waves  through  the  water.  This  method 
had  been  successfully  utilized  both  in  transmitting 
danger  signals  from  rocky  coasts  to  approaching  ships 
and  also  as  a  means  of  enabling  vessels  to  enter  diffi- 
cult harbors  by  night.  The  Submarine  Signal  Com- 
pany offered  to  disclose  the  results  of  its  researches  in 
assisting  in  the  development  of  a  submarine-detector, 
and  into  co-operation  were  brought  experts  of  the 
General  Electric  Company  and  the  Western  Electric 


220      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Company,  all  of  these  working  at  Nahant.  At  New 
London,  Col.  R.  A.  Milliken,  professor  of  physics  in 
the  University  of  Chicago  and  chairman  of  the  Phys- 
ics Committee  of  the  National  Research  Council, 
headed  the  group  working  on  the  same  problem. 
Other  experimental  stations  were  established,  one  on 
the  Mohawk  River  near  Schenectady,  where  all  the 
facilities  of  the  General  Electric  Company's  research 
laboratory  could  be  marshaled,  and  another  on  the 
Erie  Canal. 

Twelve  weeks  after  experiments  began  the  research 
workers  had  perfected  a  new  device  for  detecting  sub- 
marines. The  principle  on  which  the  submarine- 
detector  works  is  the  same  as  that  by  which  the  human 
ears  detect  the  direction  from  which  the  sound  comes. 
Sounds  of  all  sorts  are  transmitted  to  greater  distances 
and  with  much  more  intensity  through  water  than 
through  air.  But  just  as  a  person  totally  deaf  in 
one  ear  is  unable  to  determine  from  what  direction 
a  distant  sound  comes,  so  a  submarine-detector  must 
have  two  ears  in  order  to  locate  the  source  of  the 
sound.  Full  details  of  the  method  by  which  the  sub- 
marine-detector operates  are  still  a  naval  secret.  The 
device  was  first  intended  to  be  hung  overboard  amid- 
ships, below  the  water-line,  with  the  observer  sta- 
tioned on  deck.  It  was  later  adapted  to  be  attached 
to  the  hull  of  the  vessel  with  the  observer  inside  the 
hold,  having  electric  connections  leading  through  the 
side  of  the  ship.  Further  experiments  developed  that 
in  heavy  weather  the  rocking  of  the  boat  and  the 
slapping  of  the  waves  against  the  ship's  sides  confused 
the  sounds  reaching  the  observer's  ears,  and  accurate 
observations  could  only  be  made  with  the  engines 
stopped.  All  of  these  difficulties  were  overcome  by 
long  and  patient  experiment,  and  in  the  autumn  of 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      221 

1917  a  squadron  of  submarine-chasers  was  equipped 
with  the  device  and  a  number  of  American  submarines 
were  used  as  "bait"  in  order  that  a  thorough  test 
could  be  made.  The  machine  worked  perfectly;  the 


LISTENING   FOR   SUBMARINES 

When  the  familiar  sound  of  the  U-boat's  engines  and  propellers  is  of  the  same  in- 
tensity in  both  ears,  the  indicator  tells  the  precise  bearing  of  the  submarine  from 
the  ship. 


exact  position  of  the  submarine  when  fully  submerged 
was  discovered  without  the  slightest  difficulty. 

Then  came  the  problem  of  differentiating  the  noise 
made  by  the  submarine  from  the  noise  made  by  the 
propellers  and  engines  of  some  other  craft  at  a  dis- 
tance. A  series  of  experiments  proved  that  the  sound 
of  a  submarine  in  the  receiving  apparatus  is  quite 


222      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

different  from  that  of  any  other  ship.  Phonograph 
records  were  made  which  exactly  reproduced  the 
sounds  made  by  different  sorts  of  craft  as  heard  in 
the  receivers  of  the  submarine-detector,  and  these 
phonograph  records  were  used  in  the  school  for  sub- 
marine listeners  established  at  Nahant,  which  was 
attended  by  officers  and  enlisted  men  of  the  navy  who 
were  trained  in  the  use  of  the  device. 

By  the  end  of  1917  the  submarine-detector  had  been 
so  perfected  that  its  manufacture  was  begun,  and 
Capt.  R.  H.  Leigh,  U.S.N.,  was  detailed  to  head  a 
special  party  of  American  officers  and  enlisted  men 
and  civilian  engineers  to  take  a  quantity  of  the  ap- 
paratus to  England  and  test  it  out  under  actual  service 
conditions.  The  American  submarine-detector  proved 
its  value  at  once.  In  December,  1917,  from  two  to 
five  U-boats  passed  through  the  English  Channel 
daily.  After  July  i,  1918,  when  the  entire  submarine 
patrol  fleet  of  the  British  and  American  navies  had 
been  equipped  with  the  listening  device,  only  one 
submarine  is  known  to  have  passed  through  the  Eng- 
lish Channel.  In  June,  1918,  according  to  Admiralty 
estimates,  one  out  of  every  four  submarines  was  de- 
stroyed. By  October,  1918,  five  out  of  every  twelve 
never  returned  to  their  bases. 

C.  P.  Scott,  of  the  General  Electric  Company,  who 
was  one  of  the  civilian  engineers  sent  over  to  super- 
vise the  installation  of  the  submarine-detector,  in 
an  official  report  has  described  the  operation  of  the 
device  so  graphically  that  I  can  convey  an  idea  of 
its  efficiency  no  better  than  by  quoting  him. 

"The  special  party  under  Captain  Leigh  took  over 
about  ten  tons  of  anti-submarine  detection  devices 
and  had  also  worked  out  the  tactics  necessary  for  the 
detection,  pursuit,  attack,  and  destruction  of  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      223 

enemy  submarine.  A  request  was  made  of  the  British 
Admiralty  for  the  use  of  three  boats  capable  of  mak- 
ing eighteen  knots,  on  which  this  apparatus  could  be 
installed  and  a  demonstration  made.  No  vessels  of 
this  speed  were  available,  so  we  were  forced  to  accept 
three  fishing-trawlers  of  nine  to  ten  knots  speed. 

"The  three  trawlers  were  the  Andrew  King,  Kunishi, 
and  James  Bentole.  These  trawlers  were  fully  equipped 
with  all  the  American  submarine-detecting  devices, 
radio  telephones,  etc.,  at  H.  M.  dockyard  at  Ports- 
mouth, England,  and  on  December  30,  1917,  we 
steamed  out  of  the  harbor  for  our  first  real  patrol  in 
English  waters.  The  Channel  lived  up  to  its  repu- 
tation of  being  the  roughest  body  of  water  for  its 
size  in  the  world. 

"A  *P'  boat,  a  small  type  of  destroyer  developed 
for  the  war,  with  high  speed,  had  accompanied  us,  as 
the  Admiralty  feared  we  might  be  attacked  by  the 
submarine  coming  to  the  surface,  and  detailed  one 
of  these  vessels  as  an  escort. 

"The  day  after  New- Year's  we  received  a  wireless 
from  an  airship  that  a  submarine  had  been  sighted. 
We  steamed  over,  got  our  devices  out,  but  couldn't 
hear  a  thing.  Another  message  from  the  airship 
changed  the  sub's  position,  so  we  altered  our  course 
and  obtained  a  clear  indication  from  the  listening 
device.  The  Hun  was  moving  slowly  up  the  Channel, 
submerged. 

"We  gave  the  'P'  boat  a  'fix'  [cross  bearing]  on 
the  spot  where  our  indication  showed  the  submarine 
to  be.  She  ran  over  the  place,  dropping  a  'pattern' 
of  depth  charges,  and  soon  we  began  to  see  tre- 
mendous amounts  of  oil  rising  to  the  surface.  Evi- 
dently our  first  experience  was  to  be  successful.  How 
successful  we  did  not  learn  until  afterward. 


224      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

"A  trawling  device  had  been  developed  which  in- 
dicated whether  contact  with  a  submarine  had  been 
made.  After  the  oil  came  up  we  got  out  our  trawling 
device  and  ran  over  the  area  for  about  an  hour  and 
finally  got  an  indication.  We  threw  over  a  buoy  to 
indicate  the  spot  and  anchored  for  the  night,  as  it 
was  getting  dark.  Next  morning  we  trawled  again 
and  got  another  contact  within  a  hundred  yards  of 
the  buoy.  We  had  destroyed  a  submarine  in  our  first 
test  and  the  'sub*  was  given  out  by  the  Admiralty  as  a 
'probable.' 

"The  British  after  we  came  back  thought  so  well 
of  the  device  as  demonstrated  in  the  first  test  that 
many  were  ordered  from  the  United  States.  We  had 
taken  over  detailed  drawings  of  all  the  apparatus,  and 
pointed  out  to  them  that  if  the  shipping  facilities  were 
such  that  some  delay  might  occur  in  getting  American- 
made  devices  overseas  they  could  build  them  them- 
selves. 

"About  May,  1918,  our  own  ships  began  to  come 
over  with  all  these  devices  installed.  They  were  also 
equipped  with  radio  telephones,  depth  charges,  and 
'Y'  guns. 

"When  the  American  submarine-chasers  began  to 
arrive  they  were  assigned  to  the  Channel,  where  the 
German  submarine  activities  were  greatest,  and  we 
did  a  good  deal  of  patrolling  in  the  early  spring  with 
these  chasers.  The  second  lot  of  chasers  was  ordered 
to  Corfu,  in  the  Adriatic,  in  June. 

"We  had  thirty-six  chasers  based  in  a  little  bay  on 
the  island,  and  the  barrage  of  boats  extended  across 
the  Strait  of  Otranto,  a  distance  of  about  forty  miles. 
Conditions  in  the  Adriatic  were  ideal  for  hunting 
submarines.  The  water  was  very  deep,  ranging  from 
four  hundred  to  six  hundred  fathoms,  which  meant 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      225 

that  the  submarines  when  hard  pressed  could  not 
seek  shallow  water,  as  was  their  custom  in  the  Eng- 
lish Channel  and  the  North  Sea.  Due  to  less  shipping 
traffic  in  these  waters,  there  was  practically  no  sound 
interference,  which  made  for  very  good  listening. 

"The  main  Austrian  submarine  bases  were  at  Pola, 
at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  and  Cattaro,  farther  down 
the  coast. 

"The  German  submarines  leaving  Pola  were 
obliged  to  go  through  Otranto  Strait  to  get  to  the 
Mediterranean,  and  once  through  they  had  things 
practically  their  own  way,  as  there  were  very  few 
patrol-boats  in  the  Mediterranean.  The  tonnage  sunk 
during  the  first  three  years  of  the  war  shows  the  con- 
dition that  existed  before  the  Otranto  barrage  was 
put  in  effect. 

"Our  submarine-chasers  while  on  barrage  were  con- 
stantly in  sound  contact  with  enemy  submarines, 
especially  at  night,  as  they  usually  attempted  to  get 
through  during  the  dark  hours.  They  would  run 
down  on  the  surface  at  their  maximum  speed  and 
could  be  heard  for  an  hour  or  two  before  they  came  to 
our  line.  The  difference  between  the  sound  of  an  oil- 
engine and  that  of  an  electric  motor  is  so  distinctive 
that  it  was  comparatively  easy  to  tell  when  they 
changed  from  one  to  the  other,  which  was  necessary 
as  soon  as  they  submerged.  As  they  knew  approxi- 
mately where  our  line  was,  they  invariably  submerged 
two  or  three  miles  before  they  reached  the  line. 

"The  course  of  the  submarine  was  plotted  to  scale 
by  the  flag-ship  of  a  unit  from  bearings  given  to  it 
from  the  other  two  boats  and  also  from  its  own  bear- 
ings. When  the  submarine  had  approached  suffi- 
ciently close,  the  unit  was  got  under  way  and  ma- 
neuvered into  position  for  attack.  The  attack  was 


226      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

usually  made  when  the  submarine  was  400  or  500 
yards  ahead,  and  all  three  boats  of  a  unit,  steaming  full 
speed  ahead,  would  lay  a  pattern  of  depth  charges 
over  the  area  where  the  plotted  position  showed  the 
submarine  to  be. 

"Many  successful  attacks  were  made  in  these 
waters,  one  in  particular  being  quite  exciting.  One  of 
the  ships  in  a  unit  heard  what  sounded  like  a  sub- 
marine. In  a  few  minutes  all  three  listeners  had 
picked  him  up  and  the  bearing  of  his  course  was  being 
plotted.  The  middle  chaser,  the  flag-ship,  was  get- 
ting readings  showing  that  the  submarine  was  in  a 
direct  line  astern  and  steaming  toward  her. 

"The  sound  was  very  loud,  as  if  the  'sub'  must 
be  very  close.  Suddenly  the  water  began  to  slap  the 
bottom  of  the  boat  so  that  every  one  could  feel  it, 
and  the  next  moment  the  observer  reported  that  his 
bearing  on  the  submarine  had  changed  from  180 
degrees,  which  was  dead  astern,  to  3  degrees,  which 
was  on  our  bows.  The  submerged  submarine  had 
passed  directly  under  the  center  boat.  All  three  boats 
were  immediately  got  under  way  and  the  attack  was 
delivered.  After  all  the  depth  charges  had  been 
dropped  the  ships  were  stopped  and  observations 
again  taken.  A  propeller  was  heard  to  start  up  and  run 
for  about  thirty  seconds,  and  then  a  crunching  noise 
was  heard.  It  was  quite  evident  that  the  'sub,' 
having  been  put  out  of  control,  sank  to  the  bottom 
and  had  collapsed,  due  to  the  tremendous  pressure 
at  these  depths.  We  went  back  to  the  spot  the  next 
morning  and  found  an  oil  slick  2  miles  long  by  800 
yards  wide  on  the  surface  of  the  water.  The  submarine 
was  doubtless  put  out  of  control,  and  after  getting 
down  to  300  or  400  feet  in  depth  had  collapsed,  due 
to  the  tremendous  pressure  at  these  depths. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      227 

"We  told  the  admiral  at  Brindisi,  Commodore  Kelly, 
about  this  attack  and  he  was  very  much  interested. 

"'But,'  he  said,  'what  we  want  is  a  few  arms  and 
legs  with  it.  It  is  interesting  enough  to  bring  up  a 
lot  of  oil,  but  you  know  how  they  are  at  the  Ad- 
miralty— they  want  proof.' 

"We  replied  that  we  wished  we  could  do  it,  but 
under  the  circumstances  the  water  was  too  deep. 
At  the  point  where  a  submarine  goes  down  out  of 
control  there  isn't  anything  to  come  up.  We  were 
rather  amused  at  reports  that  after  a  submarine  was 
sunk  how  chairs  and  everything  else  came  to  the 
surface.  For  my  part,  I  never  saw  anything  the  size 
of  your  hand  on  a  submarine  that  would  float. 

"The  addition  of  listening  devices  to  all  American 
submarines  was  of  tremendous  assistance  to  them 
when  out  on  patrol.  The  American  submarine  base 
was  at  Bear  Haven,  Ireland,  and  submarines  operated 
from  there  off  the  west  coast  of  Ireland  on  the  look- 
out for  U-boats.  Up  to  the  time  that  we  entered  the 
war,  submarines,  once  they  submerged,  were  both 
blind  and  deaf.  The  development  of  the  listeners 
for  use  with  submarines  gave  them  an  added  sense 
which  they  used  constantly  after  they  got  into  the 
war  zone  and  began  an  anti-submarine  warfare. 

"The  first  trip  the  AL-i  made,  after  having  had 
an  American  detector  installed,  was  following  a  U-- 
boat (which  she  had  previously  seen  submerge  about 
four  miles  distant)  for  four  hours,  both  submerged, 
the  AL-i  changing  her  course  entirely  by  observa- 
tions given  to  the  captain  by  the  listener.  The  Hun 
was  unaware  that  he  was  being  followed,  'blew  his 
tanks, '  and  came  up,  all  of  which  could  be  heard  on 
the  AL-i,  and  when  the  AL-i  rose  to  periscope  height 
and  'took  a  look,'  the  U-boat  was  only  600  yards 


228      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

away  and  dead  ahead.  We  shot  a  torpedo  at  him,  but 
the  torpedo  'broached'  (came  out  of  the  water),  and 
the  German,  who  apparently  was  scanning  the  hori- 
zon rather  carefully  before  coming  entirely  up,  saw 
it  coming  and  immediately  made  a  crash  dive  to 
escape  it.  This  is  only  one  instance  of  what  the  added 
sense  of  hearing  did  for  the  submarines  as  patrol 
vessels.  It  also  enabled  them  to  stay  submerged 
when  surface  craft  were  in  the  neighborhood." 

A  peculiar  incident  which  happened  early  one 
morning  in  the  Mediterranean  near  the  entrance  to 
the  Adriatic  Sea  shows  that  complete  evidence  of 
the  effectiveness  of  the  depth  charge  was  not  always 
lacking.  An  enemy  submarine  had  been  caught  in 
a  net.  A  pattern  of  depth  charges  was  laid  around  her 
and  the  trawler  backed  away  to  take  an  observation. 
One  of  the  observers,  who  was  operating  the  over- 
board listening  device  from  his  station  on  deck,  felt 
a  heavy  object  brush  against  the  detector.  A  few 
minutes  later  he  was  dumfounded  to  see  a  German 
sailor  climb  on  board.  He  had  evidently  been  thrown 
into  the  sea  by  the  force  of  the  explosion  and  saved 
himself  by  grasping  the  detector  as  he  drifted  through 
the  water ! 

The  biggest  single  military  job  our  navy  did  in  the 
war  was  the  laying  of  a  mine  barrage  across  the  prin- 
cipal channels  of  the  North  Sea,  a  barrage  which 
could  have  been  and  doubtless  would  have  been  ex- 
tended, had  the  war  continued,  so  as  to  make  it  ab- 
solutely certain  that  any  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
German  fleet  to  come  out  would  have  resulted  in 
complete  disaster.  The  speed  and  efficiency  with 
which  these  mines  were  laid  excited  the  wonder  and 
admiration  of  the  personnel  of  the  British  naval 
forces  with  which  our  navy  was  co-operating. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      229 

The  mines  themselves  are  marvels  of  Yankee  in- 
genuity, as  well  as  the  method  of  laying  them.  A 
mine-laying  ship  could  steam  ahead  at  full  speed  and 
lay  mines  at  exactly  regular  intervals,  each  mine 
being  anchored  in  place  and  so  attached  to  its  anchor 
as  to  float  at  an  exact  predetermined  depth  below  the 
surface  of  the  water.  Our  North  Sea  barrage  con- 
sisted of  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  mines  placed 
at  three  different  depths  in  parallel  rows,  from  seven 
to  fifteen  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  water. 

How  mines  can  be  tossed  overboard  in  a  heavy 


RAW  MATERIAL  FOR  THE  NORTH  SEA  MINE  BARRAGE 

Stores  of  mine  sinkers,  two  deep,  and,  back  of  them,  mine  spheres,  three  deep,  await- 
ing assembly,  or  "marrying."    Inverness,  Scotland. 


sea,  with  the  sure  knowledge  that  they  will  remain 
floating  at  a  fixed  spot  and  at  a  fixed  depth  below  the 
level  of  the  water,  is  a  puzzle  that  even  many  men 
in  the  navy  who  have  been  actually  engaged  in  this 
mine-laying  work  do  not  fully  understand.  It  is  easy 
to  understand  how  a  certain  length  of  cable  may  be 
attached  to  an  anchor  at  one  end  and  a  mine  at  the 
other,  and  if  the  depth  of  the  water  is  known  of  course 
the  length  of  the  cable  can  be  adjusted  to  hold  the 
mine  at  a  certain  depth  below  the  surface.  This  is 

16 


230      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  old-fashioned  method.  It  involves  very  careful 
soundings  for  every  mine  and  a  certain  amount  of 
guesswork  and  change.  The  water  at  the  point 
where  one  mine  is  placed  may  be  100  feet  deep;  20 
yards  farther  on,  where  the  next  mine  is  planted,  it 
may  be  200  feet  deep.  Another  20  yards  and  the  depth 
may  be  300  feet. 

These  variations  in  depth  make  no  difference  what- 
ever with  the  laying  of  the  new  American  naval  mines, 
the  mechanism  of  which  I  shall  attempt  to  describe 
as  clearly  as  possible.  The  mine  itself  is  a  simple 
affair,  consisting  of  a  spherical  buoyant  chamber  con- 
taining in  its  interior  a  quantity  of  high  explosive, 
and  so  sensitized  to  sudden  blows  that  a  vessel  strik- 
ing the  mine  from  any  angle  or  on  any  side  will  im- 
mediately set  off  the  explosive.  The  Yankee  trick 
that  enabled  us  to  lay  this  great  North  Sea  barrage 
lies  in  the  mine  anchor  and  the  mechanism  which  it 
contains.  The  mine  anchor  is  a  cubical  box  of  gal- 
vanized sheet-iron.  It  is  weighted  on  the  bottom 
sufficiently  to  furnish  a  firm  anchorage,  even  in 
stormy  weather,  for  the  mine  that  floats  above  it  and 
to  which  it  is  attached  by  a  thin  wire  cable. 

Inside  the  square  box  of  the  anchor  is  a  reel,  from 
which  run  two  lengths  of  wire  cable.  One  of  these  is 
attached  to  the  mine  itself  and  is  long  enough  to 
reach  from  the  surface  approximately  to  the  bottom 
in  any  depth  of  water  in  which  it  is  practicable  to 
lay  mines.  The  other  cable  is  attached  to  a  solid 
lump  of  metal  called  a  plummet.  Before  it  is  launched 
the  mine  nests  in  the  open  top  of  the  boxlike  anchor 
and  is  fastened  by  a  simple  catch  which  loops  over  a 
projection  on  the  mine  itself.  On  the  bottom  of  the 
anchor  box  are  four  flanged  wheels  which  run  on  rails 
laid  on  the  deck  of  the  mine-laying  ship. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      231 

These  rails  lead  to  the  stern  of  the  ship  and  end 
there  at  a  port  through  which  the  mine  is  launched 
overboard.  Two,  three,  four,  or  more  lines  of  rails, 
leading  into  the  launching  ports  from  switches  and 
side-tracks  inside  the  ship,  where  the  mines  are 
stored,  make  it  possible  to  launch  mines  at  the  rate 
of  two  or  three  a  minute,  or  even  faster  if  necessary. 

The  trick  that  determines  the  depth  below  the  sur- 
face at  which  the  mine  will  float,  once  it  is  anchored 
safely  at  the  bottom,  is  turned  by  adjusting  the  length 
of  the  cable  to  which  the  plummet  is  attached  before 
the  mine  is  launched.  Is  it  desired  to  have  the  mine 
float  at  a  depth  of  seven  feet  below  the  surface? 
Then  the  plummet-line  is  exactly  seven  feet  long; 
and  this  is  what  happens  when  the  mine,  nested 
in  its  anchor  box,  is  dropped  overboard: 

First  the  entire  apparatus  starts  to  sink,  the  weight 
of  the  anchor  dragging  the  buoyant  mine  below  the 
surface.  A  few  feet  below  the  surface  the  water  press- 
ure acts  upon  a  trigger,  releasing  it  and  thereby  un- 
fastening the  catch  that  holds  the  mine  to  the  anchor 
box.  The  mine  rises  to  the  surface,  the  anchor  box 
continues  to  sink,  its  downward  progress  now  ac- 
celerated, since  it  is  relieved  of  the  buoyancy  of  the 
mine.  But  the  solid  plummet  has  reached  the  end  of 
its  cable  and  is  hanging  at  the  same  distance  below 
the  anchor  that  it  is  desired  to  have  the  mine  float 
below  the  surface. 

So  long  as  the  weight  of  the  plummet  is  suspended 
from  the  anchor  box  the  windlass  or  reel  from  which 
the  mine  cable  is  paid  out  continues  to  function  and 
the  anchor  descends,  with  the  mine  itself  floating  on 
the  surface.  The  instant  the  plummet  touches  bot- 
tom the  removal  of  the  strain  on  the  plummet  cable 
releases  a  catch  inside  the  anchor  box,  which  locks 


232      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  reel  and  prevents  the  paying  out  of  any  more 
cable. 

If  the  plummet  cable  is  seven  feet  long  it  is  quite 
apparent  that  this  locking  of  the  reel  will  occur  when 
the  anchor  is  just  seven  feet  from  the  bottom.  But 
the  anchor  continues  to  sink  and  now  it  begins  to  pull 
the  mine  down  with  it,  since  the  mine  cable  no  longer 
runs  freely  from  the  reel.  The  mine  itself,  therefore, 
is  drawn  from  the  surface  to  a  depth  of  seven  feet  or 
to  such  other  depth  as  may  have  been  determined  in 
advance  by  the  length  of  the  plummet  cable. 

This  method  of  planting  mines,  and  the  mine- 
anchor  mechanism  that  makes  it  possible  to  lay  them 
rapidly  and  in  large  numbers,  have  been  among  the 
most  carefully  guarded  of  the  navy  secrets.  By 
September,  1918,  the  Navy  Bureau  of  Ordnance  had 
developed  the  production  of  mines  to  where  more 
than  1,000  complete  mines  were  being  turned  out 
daily.  An  official  statement  of  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment issued  September  9,  1918,  stated  that  "if  all  the 
mines  produced  by  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  since 
America  entered  the  war  were  planted  (the  same  dis- 
tance being  maintained  between  the  mines  as  in  min- 
ing operations  at  sea)  the  mine  belt  would  cross  the 
Atlantic  eight  times." 

To  obtain  these  mines  in  such  enormous  quantities, 
as  well  as  to  preserve  secrecy  regarding  their  charac- 
teristics, a  radical  departure  from  usual  manufact- 
uring methods  was  adopted.  Naval  plants  did  not 
possess  facilities  for  manufacturing  as  many  as  1,000 
mines  per  month,  and  such  plants  were  congested  with 
other  work.  It  was  impracticable  to  develop  a  great 
plant  for  the  sole  purpose  of  manufacturing  mines, 
since  there  was  not  sufficient  time  for  this  purpose. 
The  expedient  was  adopted,  therefore,  of  dividing 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      233 

the  mine  into  many  parts  and  having  these  manu- 
factured at  different  commercial  plants,  all  the  parts 
being  brought  together  and  assembled,  the  mine  being 
then  loaded  at  a  central  mine  depot.  The  work  was 
divided  among  140  principal  contractors  and  more 
than  400  sub-contractors. 

In  the  design  of  these  American  mines  special  care 
was  taken  to  fulfil  all  requirements  of  the  Hague 
Convention.  Should  a  mine  break  adrift  from  its 
anchor  it  is  immediately  rendered  inactive  by  internal 
mechanism  placed  there  for  that  specific  purpose,  and 
it  floats  on  the  surface,  where  it  can  easily  be  de- 
stroyed. Should  a  ship  strike  a  floating  American 
mine  the  firing-mechanism  would  not  function. 


XIII 

THE    WONDERS    OF   WAR    WIRELESS 

IN  the  winter  of  1902-03  I  had  the  privilege  of  vis- 
iting William  Marconi,  the  inventor  of  wireless 
telegraphy,  at  his  first  transatlantic  wireless  station 
at  Glace  Bay,  Cape  Breton.  With  the  aid  of  a  crude 
and  bulky  apparatus  signals  had  just  been  inter- 
changed for  the  first  time  between  America  and  the 
British  Islands.  Sometimes  the  signals  were  intelli- 
gible, sometimes  they  were  totally  incomprehensible. 
Any  electrical  disturbance  in  the  atmosphere,  a 
thunder-storm,  the  aurora  borealis,  made  wireless 
communication  impossible.  Signals  could  be  trans- 
mitted only  at  night;  by  day  the  huge  installation 
was  useless. 

People  laughed  at  Marconi  and  his  dream  of  wire- 
less as  a  practical  means  of  communication.  His 
faith  in  himself  and  in  the  future  of  his  invention  was 
unbounded.  One  day  we  stood  on  the  cliff  at  Table 
Head  and  looked  out  over  the  Atlantic.  Far  off  on 
the  horizon  rose  a  column  of  smoke,  revealing  the 
presence  of  a  steamship,  hull  down,  just  over  the 
curve  of  the  world. 

"Some  day,"  said  Marconi,  "every  ship  will  carry 
a  wireless  outfit  and  will  always  be  in  communication 
with  land  and  other  ships.  It  will  make  navigation 
easier  and  safer,  and  that  will  be  enough  reward  for 
me  if  I  never  make  any  money  out  of  this  invention." 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR        235 

It  was  wonderful  to  think  of.  It  was  incredible 
that  such  things  could  be.  The  inventor's  imagina- 
tion had  projected  itself  so  far  beyond  the  bounds  of 
anything  with  which  the  world  was  familiar  that  his 
dream  savored  of  the  supernatural.  As  we  passed 


THE   NAVY   WIRELESS  STATION   AT   ARLINGTON 

The  four  six-hundred-and-fifty-foot  towers  that  support  the  aerials  of  the 
most  powerful  wireless  station  in  the  world 

through  historic  Salem  on  our  way  back  to  Boston  I 
outlined  briefly  to  the  brilliant  young  Italian  the 
story  of  Salem 's  famous  witchcraft  trials  and  execu- 
tions. Marconi  smiled. 

"They  wouldn't  have  done  a  thing  to  me,  would 
they?"  was  his  comment. 

While  Marconi  was  tinkering  with  his  wireless  toy 
on  the  coast  of  Nova  Scotia  a  couple  of  Americans 


236      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

were  playing  with  another  toy  a  thousand  miles 
farther  south,  on  the  coast  of  North  Carolina. 
Down  at  Kittyhawk  the  Wright  brothers  were  just 
finding  out  how  to  make  a  flying-machine  fly.  They 
might  have  laughed  at  Marconi,  as  Marconi  might 
have  laughed  at  them,  had  either  of  them  known 
what  the  other  was  trying  to  do.  Vivid  as  was  the 
wireless  man's  imagination,  wonderful  as  were  the 
possibilities  of  radio  communication  as  he  visualized 
them,  the  wonders  that  have  been  wrought  in  but  a 
few  years  have  so  far  surpassed  his  early  dream  that 
the  things  he  alone  foresaw  then  have  become  com- 
monplace. 

Marconi  never  dreamed,  any  more  than  the  Wright 
brothers,  of  a  day  when,  as  the  result  of  the  combina- 
tion of  their  two  discoveries,  men  flying  150  miles 
an  hour,  three,  four,  five  miles  up  in  the  air,  could 
talk  with  other  men  flying  in  other  machines,  or  with 
people  on  the  earth's  surface,  and  hear  instructions 
given  by  wireless  telephone  from  a  distance  of  twenty, 
sixty,  or  even  hundreds  of  miles. 

Of  all  the  wonders  worked  by  the  miracle-makers 
in  the  war  the  perfection  of  the  wireless  telephone  is 
perhaps  the  most  wonderful.  In  the  whole  field  of 
radio  communication  marvelous  strides  have  been 
made.  Communication  by  wireless  telegraphy  has 
been  perfected  until  it  is  now  definitely  possible  and 
a  matter  of  every-day  practice  for  messages  to  be  sent 
from  the  United  States  government's  great  station 
at  Arlington,  the  largest  and  most  powerful  in  the 
world,  half-way  around  the  globe. 

Weather  and  atmospheric  conditions  no  longer  inter- 
fere with  successful  wireless  transmission.  By  means 
of  tuning-devices,  impulses  from  one  station  do  not 
interfere  with  those  from  another.  Means  have  also 


23  8      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

been  found  for  the  successful  transmission  by  radio 
impulses  of  energy  so  directed  and  controlled  that 
vessels  may  be  navigated  at  a  distance,  and  even  air- 
craft sent  aloft,  guided  and  steered  and  brought  in 
safely  without  a  pilot.  But  the  wireless  telephone 
in  its  perfection  is  the  most  startling  and  marvelous 
of  all  the  war-born  applications  of  Marconi's  epoch- 
making  discovery,  and  in  its  adaptation  to  com- 
munication between  aircraft  and  the  earth  has  found 
its  most  spectacular  use. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  there  had 
been  developed  by  the  Allies  a  system  of  wireless 
telegraphy  between  airplanes  and  the  earth,  which, 
however,  made  it  necessary  that  every  observer  using 
it  should  be  an  expert  telegraph  operator.  It  hap- 
pened that  at  the  head  of  the  United  States  Signal 
Corps  was  the  one  man  who  had  probably  gone 
farther  than  any  one  else  in  the  field  to  perfect  the 
wireless  telephone,  Ma j. -Gen.  George  O.  Squier, 
Chief  Signal  Officer,  U.S.A.  General  Squier,  nearly 
ten  years  before,  had  invented  a  device  which  he 
termed  the  multiplex  telephone,  by  means  of  which 
any  number  of  telephonic  communications  could  be 
carried  on  at  once  over  a  single  wire;  the  system  was 
in  reality  a  wireless-telephone  system,  the  wire 
serving  merely  to  direct  the  wireless  waves  along  a 
certain  path.  This  system  was  recently  perfected, 
and  is  now  in  commercial  use  by  the  American  Tele- 
graph and  Telephone  Company.  It  was  General 
Squier  who  first  discovered  that  a  tree  could  be  used 
as  a  wireless  tower  by  fastening  the  ground  wire  to  a 
nail  driven  into  the  trunk.  He  had  installed  the  first 
wireless  system  in  the  Philippines,  he  had  originated 
other  devices  and  developed  the  wireless-telegraph 
system  in  use  by  the  United  States  army,  and  under 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      239 

his  direction  the  development  of  a  radio-telephone 
system  for  airplanes  was  undertaken. 

The  problems  involved  were  many,  the  obstacles  to 
be  overcome  baffling.  But  before  the  United  States 
had  been  a  year  at  war  wireless  equipment  for  air- 
planes, solving  every  problem  and  overcoming  every 
difficulty,  had  been  perfected  and  was  being  manu- 
factured by  thousands  of  sets,  so  that  within  a  few 
months  every  observation  airplane  in  the  service  of 
the  United  States  in  France  would  have  been  equipped, 
as  a  large  number  of  them  had  been  equipped,  with 
an  apparatus  that  would  enable  the  pilot  and  ob- 
server to  talk  with  each  other,  to  talk  with  wireless- 
telephone  stations  behind  their  own  lines,  and  so  con- 
vey instantly  information  of  the  enemy's  movements 
or  report  the  effect  of  artillery  fire,  and  to  hear  mes- 
sages spoken  into  telephone  receivers  on  the  ground 
many  miles  away. 

Moreover,  the  commanding  officer  of  a  squadron 
of  airplanes  could  by  telephone  direct  the  movements 
of  the  squadron  or  of  particular  airplanes,  speaking 
only  in  an  ordinary  conversational  tone. 

And  when  I  say  that  this  apparatus  had  been  per- 
fected I  mean  precisely  that.  Details  of  the  mechan- 
ism may  be  further  refined,  weight  may  be  reduced 
by  such  refinement  and  probably  will  be  in  the  future, 
and  the  range  of  communication  may  be,  and  prob- 
ably will  be,  greatly  extended  by  reason  of  these  and 
other  improvements.  But  airplane  radio-telephone 
apparatus  in  use  to-day,  of  which  the  army  possesses 
many  thousands  of  sets,  will  be  perfectly  adapted  to 
any  service  that  may  be  required  of  it  ten  or  fifteen 
years  from  now,  just  as  a  high-grade  automobile  of  the 
1909  model  answers  every  essential  purpose  of  an 
automobile  to-day.  The  newer  machines  may  be 


24o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

more  attractive  in  their  lines  and  equipped  with  more 
conveniences,  but  that  is  all  the  essential  difference. 

The  first  problem  to  be  solved  in  equipping  air- 
planes with  wireless  was  to  overcome  the  noise  of  the 
motor-exhaust  and  the  propeller.  Not  even  the 
traditional  boiler-factory  is  as  noisy  as  the  cockpit 
of  an  airplane.  Even  putting  a  muffler  on  the  engine, 
if  that  could  be  done  without  reducing  power  and 
causing  dangerous  backfiring,  would  not  serve  to  re- 
duce the  noise,  the  worst  of  which  comes  from  the  pro- 
peller-blades. 

In  the  Signal  Corps  laboratory  was  set  up  a  ma- 
chine for  producing  a  noise  exactly  duplicating  the 
noise  of  a  high-powered  airplane  in  flight,  and  here 
were  tested  innumerable  devices  of  ear-pieces  in- 
tended to  exclude  all  sounds,  except  those  of  the 
telephone  receiver,  from  the  aviator's  ears.  It  was 
discovered  that  not  only  must  the  external  ear  be 
protected  against  sound  waves,  but  that  the  bones  of 
the  head  and  face  all  serve  as  a  sounding-board  or 
diaphragm,  transmitting  sound  from  the  surface  to 
the  auditory  nerves.  So  there  was  finally  devised  a 
helmet  covering  all  of  the  bony  surface  of  the  skull, 
lined  with  spongy  rubber  backed  up  with  tin-foil 
and  covered  externally  with  thick  leather.  With 
this  helmet  on  the  wearer  can  hear  only  the  sounds 
formed  by  the  vibration  of  the  telephone  diaphragms 
attached  to  the  inside  of  the  helmet  and  clamped  by 
it  firmly  over  his  ears. 

It  was  not  enough,  however,  to  protect  the  ears  of 
the  aviator  against  the  noise  of  the  machine;  a  trans- 
mitter had  to  be  devised  that  would  not  gather  and 
transmit  the  noise  of  exhaust  and  propeller,  but  that 
would,  nevertheless,  respond  to  the  aviator's  voice 
without  too  much  effort  on  his  part.  This  was  finally 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       241 

accomplished  by  inclosing  the  transmitter,  which  is 
attached  in  such  a  way  that  it  always  is  close  to  the 
aviator's  mouth,  in  an  aluminum-covered,  sound- 
proof case,  pierced  with  three  small  holes.  This  per- 
mits the  receiver  to  function  when  one  speaks  directly 


AIR-DRIVEN   DYNAMO    FOR   WIRELESS   TELEPHONY 

The  tiny  propeller  operates  a  little  magneto  when  in  flight,  generating  sufficient 
current  to  actuate  the  flyer's  wireless-telephone  apparatus 

into  these  holes,  but  sounds  coming  from  an  angle 
or  laterally  are  not  transmitted. 

Muffled  in  his  sound-proof  helmet,  a  pilot  or  ob- 
server cannot  even  hear  the  sound  of  his  own  voice. 
No  sound  waves  can  reach  him  except  such  as  are 
received  through  the  ear-pieces  inside  the  helmet. 
Medical  observers  report  a  distinct  physical  and  psy- 
chological improvement  in  airmen  who  wear  the  hel- 
mets. A  large  part  of  the  nerve  strain  under  which 
so  many  fliers  have  collapsed  has  been  attributed 
to  the  incessant  noise  of  the  machines,  which  is  thus 
eliminated.  There  is  also  a  marked  diminution  of  the 


242      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

tendency  to  deafness  which  has  affected  aviators  in 
the  past. 

A  detailed  description  of  the  perfected  airplane 
wireless  equipment  would  involve  going  into  techni- 
calities which  even  wireless  men  sometimes  find  dif- 
ficult to  grasp.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  its  successful 
development  was  based  upon  novel  uses  and  adapta- 
tions of  the  audion,  a  little  device  invented  by  Dr.  Lee 
De  Forest,  America's  foremost  wireless  inventor,  and 
which  is  sometimes  termed  the  "bottle  imp"  of  wire- 
less. The  audion,  which  is  a  development  of  the 
Crookes  tube,  which  in  turn  is  the  basis  of  the  X-ray, 
is  the  most  versatile  device  known  to  electric  science. 
It  serves  as  a  receiver  and  as  a  transmitter,  as  a 
detector  and  an  amplifier,  for  transforming  alternating 
into  direct  current  and  vice  versa,  besides  being  able 
to  perform  many  other  curious  and  useful  tricks. 

The  whole  wireless  installation  for  an  army  air- 
plane weighs  about  125  pounds,  and  is  all  stored  in  a 
wooden  box  no  bigger  than  a  suit-case.  By  turning  a 
knob  the  man  in  the  machine  can  adjust  the  in- 
strument to  any  one  of  forty-five  combinations  of 
tone  and  wave  length,  there  being  nine  wave  lengths 
and  five  tones  provided  for. 

This  makes  it  possible  to  eliminate  interference  ab- 
solutely; a  commander  of  a  flying  squadron  can  use 
one  combination  to  talk  to  the  men  of  his  squadron, 
another  to  talk  to  the  observer  in  his  own  machine, 
another  for  communication  with  the  headquarters  of 
his  squadron  on  the  ground,  still  another  for  commu- 
nication with  the  artillery  whose  fire  he  may  be 
directing,  and  yet  have  many  other  combinations  in 
reserve  for  use  in  talking  with  other  stations,  and  he 
can  switch  from  one  to  the  other  of  these  instantly 
by  the  turning  of  a  knob.  At  the  same  time  his  ob- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      243 

server  may  be  receiving  messages  from  one  or  another 
of  these  stations.  By  means  of  blinker  lights,  inter- 
ference between  pilot  and  observer  is  prevented,  as 
each  sees  a  visible  signal  when  the  other  is  using  the 
telephone. 

The  range  of  wireless  telephony,  like  wireless  teleg- 
raphy, is  limited  by  the  power  of  the  sending  station ; 


W  V 


WIRELESS   TELEPHONE   TRANSMITTER   AND  HEADPIECE 

The  transmitter  is  completely  inclosed  in  an  aluminum  case  pierced  by  three  tiny 
holes,  excluding  all  sounds  but  words  spoken  directly  into  it 

the  sending  range  of  an  airplane  is  necessarily  short. 
About  15  miles  is  the  maximum  for  an  army  machine 
and  around  60  miles  for  the  bigger  navy  seaplanes, 
which  carry  an  apparatus  weighing  about  twice  as 
much  as  that  of  the  army  airplane.  There  is  no 
limit  to  the  distance  from  which  an  airplane  in  the 
air  may  receive  messages ;  while  it  has  not  been  done, 
there  is  no  reason  why  an  American  'plane  flying  over 
Germany  should  not  hear  a  telephone  message  directed 
to  it  from  the  Navy  Department  sending  station  at 


244      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Arlington.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  tuning.  The 
200  feet  of  copper  wire  with  a  weight  on  the  end, 
which  the  aviator  unreels  as  he  ascends  and  winds  up 
as  he  alights,  is  an  antenna  sufficient  to  receive  mes- 
sages from  any  distance. 

For  sending  wireless  impulses  the  airplane  radio 
outfit  generates  its  own  power;  storage  batteries  were 
tried,  but  they  were  too  heavy,  so  a  little  generator, 
which  is  in  all  essentials,  except  size,  exactly  like  the 
big  dynamos  in  electric-light  stations,  was  devised. 
It  is  inclosed  in  a  cylindrical  case,  tapered  off  at  one 
end  until  it  looks  like  a  shell.  At  the  other  end  is  a 
tiny  propeller.  The  apparatus  is  attached  to  one 
of  the  struts  of  the  landing-gear.  As  the  airplane 
flies  the  little  propeller  acts  as  a  windmill,  rotating 
the  tiny  dynamo;  variations  in  speed  are  equalized 
by  the  versatile  audion. 

On  exactly  the  same  principle  wireless  telephones 
are  now  installed  on  all  naval  vessels.  In  the  last 
months  of  the  war  every  member  of  a  squadron  of 
destroyers  or  submarine-chasers  was  in  constant  com- 
munication with  each  of  the  other  ships  in  the  squad- 
ron by  telephone,  and  each  could  receive  telephone 
communications  from  a  mother  ship  or  from  land 
stations,  although  the  sending  sets  on  small  craft  are 
not  capable  of  extended  range.  But  when  President 
Wilson  returned  from  France  on  the  George  Washing- 
ton after  settlement  of  the  terms  of  peace,  he  was  able 
to  talk  by  wireless  telephone  from  the  ship  direct  to 
Washington,  and  to  carry  on  extended  conversations, 
so  fully  had  the  wireless  telephone  been  perfected  in 
the  four  years  since  the  Navy  Department  began  its 
experiments  with  the  radio  telephone.  For  these 
communications  the  navy  wireless  station  at  New 
Brunswick,  New  Jersey,  served  as  the  connecting  link 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      245 

between  the  radio  impulses  and  the  land  wires  of  the 
navy's  telephone  system,  messages  between  Washing- 
ton and  the  ship  being  transmitted  by  wire  from 
Washington  to  New  Brunswick,  and  thence  by  the 
radio  to  the  ship,  and  vice  versa.  These  messages  were 
not  relayed,  but  the  land  telephone  lines  were  so  con- 
nected with  the  wireless  receiving  and  sending  appa- 
ratus as  to  form  one  continuous  circuit. 

The  navy's  first  experiments  in  transmitting  the 
human  voice  over  great  distances  by  wireless  took 
place  on  August  27,  1915,  in  conjunction  with  en- 
gineers of  the  American  Telegraph  and  Telephone 
Company,  and  vocal  signals  were  transmitted  from 
the  naval  radio  station  at  Arlington  to  the  naval 
radio  station  at  Darien,  on  the  Isthmus  of  Panama. 
Two  selections  were  played  on  a  phonograph  placed 
in  front  of  the  telephone  transmitter,  and  these  were 
correctly  recognized  by  the  operators  at  Darien. 
In  addition,  words  and  sentences  were  spoken  into  the 
transmitter  by  various  officials  present,  and  several 
words  and  phrases  were  received.  The  distance  cov- 
ered was  about  2,100  miles. 

On  September  29,  1915,  a  test  was  carried  out  be- 
tween the  naval  radio  stations  at  Arlington,  Virginia, 
and  Mare  Island,  California.  The  long-distance  line 
from  New  York  was  connected  to  the  radio- telephone 
transmitter,  and  a  telephone  line  from  San  Francisco 
to  New  York  was  set  up,  so  that  conversation  might 
be  carried  on  in  both  directions.  Speech  was  success- 
fully transmitted  from  New  York  to  Washington  by 
telephone,  from  Washington  to  San  Francisco  by 
radio  telephone,  and  replies  were  received  over  the 
telephone  from  San  Francisco  to  New  York. 

Having  succeeded  in  talking  over  a  distance  of 
2,500  miles,  arrangements  were  made  whereby  radio- 
17 


246      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

telephone  signals  transmitted  from  the  naval  radio 
station  at  Arlington  would  be  received  at  Paris  and 
at  Honolulu  simultaneously.  On  October  23,  1915, 
the  signals  transmitted  from  Arlington  were  success- 
fully received  at  both  Paris  and  Honolulu. 

All  of  these  tests  consisted  of  one-way  conversations 
only.  In  May,  1915,  a  radio-telephone  transmitting 
set  was  installed  on  the  battle-ship  New  Hampshire, 
and  conversation  was  satisfactorily  conducted  in  both 
directions,  the  Arlington  station  being  used  for  the 
shore  transmission.  The  New  Hampshire  was  about 
fifty  miles  at  sea,  and  observers  reported  that  trans- 
mission was  even  more  perfect  than  with  the  ordinary 
telephone.  The  signals  could  be  received  on  any 
radio- telegraphic  receiving  apparatus,  and  many 
operators  at  shore  stations  along  the  Atlantic  coast 
heard  the  entire  test.  It  is  stated  that  various  sounds 
aboard  the  ship  could  be  heard  very  distinctly,  such 
as  the  sound  of  an  officer's  footsteps  when  walking 
across  the  deck  to  call  another  officer  to  the  telephone. 

The  apparatus  used  in  these  experiments  consisted 
of  several  score  of  vacuum  tubes  arranged  in  parallel ; 
it  was  dismantled  soon  after  the  final  experiments 
took  place.  While  the  transmission  of  speech  was 
perfectly  satisfactory,  the  installation  was  a  very 
expensive  one,  and  the  cost  of  the  upkeep  of  such 
an  outfit  would  be  prohibitive.  Messages  could  be 
transmitted  much  more  economically  and  efficiently 
by  radio-telegraphy  than  by  radio-telephony. 

A  great  many  advances  in  the  art  have  been  made 
since  that  time.  At  the  urgent  solicitation  of  the 
Navy  Department,  the  engineers  of  the  General 
Electric  Company,  the  largest  electrical  concern  in  the 
United  States,  became  interested  in  the  matter,  and 
developed  apparatus  which  is  entirely  different  from 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      247 

'the  original  outfit.  Instead  of  utilizing  oscillations 
generated  by  vacuum  tubes,  the  oscillations  are  pro- 
duced by  the  Alexanderson  high-frequency  alternator 


PERFECTED   FORM   OF   WIRELESS   HEADPIECE   FOR   AVIATORS 

Spongy  rubber  pads  press  tightly  on  all  the  bony  parts  of  the  head  to 
muffle  the  sounds  of  engine  and  propellers 


installed  at  the  New  Brunswick  radio  station,  which 
has  been  operated  by  the  Navy  Department  since  we 
entered  the  war. 

This  machine,  the  invention  of  Dr.  Ernst  F.  W. 


248      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Alexanderson,  an  engineer  of  the  General  Electric 
Company,  may  be  used  not  only  for  radio-telephony, 
but  also  without  alteration  for  radio-telegraphy,  and, 
while  the  initial  cost  is  considerable,  the  upkeep  is 
comparatively  negligible.  The  machine  is  very  stable 
and  dependable  in  every  respect,  and  can  be  produced 
in  any  size  desired.  The  resemblance  between  the 
Alexanderson  machine  and  the  original  apparatus  in- 
stalled at  Arlington  is  somewhat  similar  to  the  re- 
semblance between  a  dry  battery  and  a  dynamo.  The 
bulbs,  like  batteries,  are  expensive  and  do  not  last 
very  long,  whereas  the  Alexanderson  alternator  may 
be  used  for  years  without  deterioration. 

The  principle  upon  which  the  machine  operates  is 
exceedingly  simple.  A  large  metal  wheel,  the  rim  of 
which  consists  of  alternate  sections  of  magnetic  and 
non-magnetic  material,  rotates  at  a  high  speed  in 
a  magnetic  field,  and  produces  oscillations  in  the 
coils  in  the  magnetic  field,  the  frequency  of  the 
oscillations  being  proportional  to  the  speed  at  which 
the  machine  is  run.  Elaborate  attachments  are  pro- 
vided to  keep  the  speed  of  the  machine  absolutely 
constant.  One  of  the  great  advantages  of  the  ma- 
chine when  used  for  radio-telegraphy  is  that  the  wave 
length  transmitted  may  be  varied  simply  by  changing 
the  speed  of  the  machine. 

The  fields  of  radio-telegraphy  and  radio-telephony 
are  separate  and  distinct.  The  relation  is  very  much 
the  same  as  the  ordinary  telegraph  bears  to  the  tele- 
phone; for  instance,  it  is  usually  cheaper  and  much 
more  accurate  to  send  a  message  to  a  distant  point  by 
telegraph  than  by  telephone,  and  it  is  very  much  easier 
to  preserve  the  secrecy  of  the  communication,  as  a 
telegram  can  be  sent  in  code.  It  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  transmit  a  code 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      249 

message  by  telephone,  as  certain  letters  and  words  are 
practically  indistinguishable.  This  has  been  realized 
in  the  navy,  where  a  list  of  names  has  been  prepared 
for  the  Carious  letters  and  they  are  always  used  in 
transmitting  code  messages  or  signals  by  voice.  The 
following  are  the  names  in  use: 

a — able  j — jig  s — sail 

b — boy  k — king  t — tare 

c — cast  1 — love  u — unit 

d — dog  m — Mike  v — vice 

e — easy  n — Nan  w — watch 

f — fox  o — oboe  x — X-ray 

g — George  p — pup  y — yoke 

h — have  q — quack  z — Zed 

i — item  r — rot 

While  the  wireless  telephone  and  its  applications 
which  I  have  already  outlined  is  the  most  widely 
known  application  of  the  principle  of  energy  trans- 
mission without  the  aid  of  wires,  wireless  telegraphy 
in  many  other  forms  of  development  received  a 
tremendous  impetus  during  the  war.  At  the  outbreak 
of  the  European  War  the  most  powerful  wireless 
stations  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  were  owned  by 
Germany.  The  big  German  wireless  station  at 
Nauen,  in  the  outskirts  of  Berlin,  had  a  capacity 
extending  literally  around  the  world.  German  ships 
in  the  Indian  Ocean  and  the  South  Atlantic  were  in 
direct  communication  with  the  German  Admiralty. 
And  a  year  before  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War, 
1913,  the  German  government  built,  at  Tuckerton, 
New  Jersey,  a  secluded  little  village  on  the  shores  of 
Barnegat  Bay,  the  tallest  towers  in  the  world.  The 
steel  framework  of  this  Tuckerton  tower  was  brought 
over  from  Germany  all  ready  to  assemble;  it  was  in- 
voiced as  "building  material,"  and  so  little  suspicion 


2so      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

was  aroused  that  it  was  possible  for  the  Germans  to 
complete  the  tower  and  install  the  powerful  wireless 
apparatus,  using  the  Goldsmith  high-frequency  sys- 
tem, before  any  one  in  the  United  States  was  aware 
of  their  purpose.  This  German  wireless  tower  at 
Tuckerton  and  the  other  German  wireless  station 
at  Sayville,  Long  Island,  were  seized  by  the  United 
States  government  long  before  this  country  became  a 
belligerent,  as  there  was  evidence  the  Germans  were 
using  this  means  of  communication  in  a  way  that 
violated  America's  neutrality.  But  before  the  war 
was  over  the  United  States  had  constructed  at  Arling- 
ton, Virginia,  across  the  Potomac  River  from  Wash- 
ington, the  most  powerful  wireless  station  in  the  world. 
This  consists  of  four  steel  towers,  each  650  feet  high, 
supporting  the  antennae,  which,  with  the  ground 
system,  require  160  miles  of  wire.  This  powerful 
plant  was  erected  and  equipped  by  the  navy  in  ten 
months.  At  the  signing  of  the  armistice  we  had  under 
construction  at  Bordeaux,  France,  an  even  more  power- 
ful wireless  station,  and  with  our  naval  wireless  sta- 
tions on  the  Pacific  coast,  at  Pearl  Harbor  in  the 
Hawaiian  Islands  and  in  the  Philippines,  radio  com- 
munication between  American  stations  completely 
encircling  the  world  is  assured  at  all  times  and  any 
American  vessel  at  sea  in  any  part  of  the  world  can 
be  communicated  with  instantly. 

What  may  well  prove  to  be  the  most  useful  of  all 
applications  of  radio- telegraphy  is  the  radio  compass 
perfected  by  the  navy  electrical  experts.  The  wire- 
less compass  operates  in  precisely  the  same  fashion  as  a 
lighthouse,  except  that  its  range  is  unlimited,  while 
that  of  even  the  most  powerful  light  is  a  bare  twenty 
miles;  moreover,  it  is  not  obscured  by  fog  at  night 
and  is  equally  useful  by  day.  If  the  shipping  routes 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      251 

of  the  Seven  Seas  were  all  marked  by  rows  of  light- 
houses twenty  miles  apart,  furnishing  beacons  by 
night  and  landmarks  by  day,  navigation  would  be  as 
simple  as  walking  up  Broadway.  No  captain  with 
his  ship  under  control  would  have  the  slightest  dif- 
ficulty in  finding  his  way  about  or  into  any  port  of 
the  world.  Of  course  it  will  never  be  feasible,  either 
economically  or  as  a  matter  of  engineering,  to  mark 
the  paths  of  navigation  by  any  such  means,  but  the 
radio  compass  has  provided  a  perfectly  feasible  and 
simple  method  of  accomplishing  precisely  the  same 
result. 

I  have  said  that  the  principle  of  the  radio  compass 
is  the  same  as  that  of  a  lighthouse.  The  coasts  of 
every  civilized  country  in  the  world  are  marked  by 
lights  which  vary  one  from  another,  so  that  the 
mariner  approaching  either  a  dangerous  coast  or  the 
entrance  to  a  harbor  can  tell  by  the  character  of  the 
lights  visible  precisely  where  he  is.  Thus,  the  com- 
mander of  a  ship  approaching  New  York  Harbor, 
seeing  a  light  flashing  to  starboard  at  ten-second  in- 
tervals and  knowing  that  he  is  somewhere  southwest 
from  Nantucket,  recognizes  it  as  the  Montauk  Point 
light,  at  the  extreme  eastern  extension  of  Long 
Island.  A  little  later  on  he  picks  up  the  Shinnecock 
Bay  light,  a  group  of  lights  flashing  at  intervals  of  7>£ 
seconds,  and  that  he  is  steering  the  right  course  he 
determines  a  few  knots  farther  on  when  he  sees  the 
great  white  flare  of  Fire  Island  flashing  once  a  minute. 
But  if  too  far  out  at  sea  for  these  and  the  other  coast- 
wise lights  to  be  visible,  he  must  depend  at  night 
upon  the  stars  and  by  day  upon  the  sun  to  determine 
his  position  and  in  fog  he  has  no  guidance. 

The  radio  compass  will  give  him  his  position  on  the 
chart  at  any  time.  The  visible  apparatus  required  is 


252      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

a  coil  of  wire  wound  around  a  wooden  frame  about  six 
feet  square,  which  is  mounted  so  as  to  rotate  on  a 
vertical  axis;  the  two  ends  of  the  wire  coil  are  con- 
nected into  the  ship's  regular  radio  circuit.  At  fixed 
and  designated  wireless  stations  on  shore  signals  of 
specified  pitch,  intensity,  and  frequency  are  sent  out 
at  regular  intervals.  Thus,  for  example,  Tuckerton 
may  send  signals  in  groups  of  three  dots  and  three 
dashes  alternating,  with  an  interval  of  ten  seconds 
between  each  group,  and  this  signal  may  be  going 
out  from  Tuckerton  continuously,  day  and  night, 
with  a  wave  length  of  six  hundred  meters.  Brooklyn 
Navy- Yard  may  use  a  different  grouping  or  send 
single  dashes  spaced  a  given  number  of  seconds 
apart.  From  Sayville  still  another  compass  signal 
is  used,  from  Arlington  another,  and  so  on  until 
every  important  wireless  station  in  the  world  is  send- 
ing through  the  ether  at  all  times,  day  or  night,  com- 
pass signals  which  indicate  to  every  wireless  operator 
who  has  the  published  code  before  him  just  where  the 
signals  come  from. 

The  captain  desires  to  know  his  position,  his 
latitude  and  longitude.  He  asks  "Sparks,"  his  wire- 
less operator,  to  listen  in  with  his  wireless  compass. 
The  big  compass  coil  is  connected  up,  the  operator 
adjusts  his  receiving  apparatus  to  the  six-hundred  - 
meter  wave  length  of  the  Tuckerton  compass  signal, 
let  us  say,  and  instantly  he  hears  the  buzz — dot,  dash, 
dot,  dash,  dot,  dash  —  of  Tuckerton.  Every  five 
seconds  the  Tuckerton  signal  is  repeated.  He  rotates 
the  big  coil,  the  sound  grows  fainter;  he  rotates  it  in 
the  other  direction  and  the  sound  becomes  stronger. 
In  a  second  or  two  he  has  found  the  position  of  the 
coil  at  which  the  Tuckerton  signal  sounds  strongest 
and  clearest.  The  compass  shows  the  coil  pointing 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      253 

in  a  certain  direction,  and  he  reports  that  direction 
as  the  bearing  of  Tuckerton.  So  accurate  and  unerr- 
ing is  this  device  that  it  tells  to  the  fraction  of  a  degree 
the  exact  direction  from  which  the  radio  signals  are 
being  received.  Now  the  operator  adjusts  his  receiv- 
ing set  to  the  Say ville  wave  length ;  instantly  he  picks 
up  the  Say  ville  compass  signal,  and,  by  the  same 
process,  gets  the  compass  bearing  of  Sayville  with 
relation  to  the  ship.  It  is  the  work  of  but  a  moment 
to  project  both  bearings  on  a  chart  and  determine 
to  the  fraction  of  a  minute  the  exact  latitude  and 
longitude.  This  can  be  done  as  well  when  the  ship 
is  in  mid-Pacific,  two  thousand  miles  from  the  nearest 
land,  as  when  it  is  crawling  up  the  coast  toward  New 
York. 

The  practical  application  of  the  radio  compass  was 
demonstrated  by  the  navy  in  the  closing  months  of 
the  war,  and  the  extension  of  the  system  to  cover  the 
entire  world  was  begun  early  in  1919.  The  expense 
is  trifling,  the  cost  of  the  compass  coil  carried  on 
board  ship  being  very  small.  While  devised  as  a 
war-time  measure,  to  make  it  possible  for  ships  to 
navigate  even  when  lighthouse  lights  were  extin- 
guished in  order  to  deceive  the  enemy,  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  anything  of  greater  ultimate  usefulness  to 
peaceful  commerce.  A  precisely  similar  apparatus 
on  a  smaller  scale  has  been  tried  out  as  an  aid  to 
aerial  navigation,  and  by  this  means  aircraft  have 
been  enabled  to  return  directly  to  their  home  landing 
field  in  absolute  darkness. 

Ships  not  equipped  with  the  compass  coil  are  also 
enabled  to  find  their  positions.  Signals  from  ship  to 
shore  are  received  at  many  ports  now  equipped  with 
similar  means  of  determining  the  direction  from  which 
the  impulses  come.  Thus  a  captain  may  get  by 


254      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

wireless  a  cross -bearing  from  Sayville  and  New 
Brunswick,  let  us  say,  and  quickly  ascertain  how 
close  he  is  to  New  York. 

By  means  of  another  Yankee  development  of 
radio-telegraphy  it  has  been  made  possible  for  sub- 
marines under  water  to  receive  radio  signals  sent 
from  shore  and  to  transmit  signals  while  submerged. 
James  H.  Rogers,  a  scientist  of  Hyattsville,  Mary- 
land, working  in  collaboration  with  Navy  Department 
engineers,  demonstrated  that  radio  impulses  hurled 
into  the  air  from  a  transmitting  station  and  deflected 
toward  the  earth  do  not  become  dissipated  on  striking 
land  or  water,  but  continue  to  flow  in  straight  lines 
through  the  earth  and  through  the  seas  as  through 
the  air.  By  the  Rogers  system  messages  were  sent 
from  and  received  in  deep  holes  and  caves,  and 
by  means  of  a  very  simple  and  crude  apparatus 
clearly  intelligible  radio  signals  have  been  received 
at  a  distance  of  two  miles  under  water.  While  the 
Rogers  system  has  not  been  developed  to  the  point 
where  it  seems  likely  to  do  away  with  the  high  towers 
for  long-distance  sending,  it  definitely  eliminates  a 
large  part  of  the  cost  of  installing  receiving  stations, 
and  by  making  towers  unnecessary  for  short  distances 
may  have  a  wide  application  in  the  development  of 
commercial  radio-telegraphy.  Moreover,  static  in- 
terference due  to  disturbing  electrical  conditions  in 
the  atmosphere  is  entirely  eliminated.  Because  of 
this  advantage,  the  navy's  receiving  station  at  New 
Orleans,  where  communication  is  maintained  with 
ships  in  Southern  waters  swept  by  frequent  electrical 
storms,  uses  the  underground  apparatus  with  marked 
success. 

I  have  spoken  of  Marconi's  comparison  of  wireless 
to  witchcraft.  Savoring  perhaps  more  of  witchcraft 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      255 

than  any  other  single  phase  of  wireless  development 
is  the  control  at  a  distance  of  ships,  torpedoes,  and 
even  aircraft  by  means  of  radio  impulses.  This,  too, 
is  a  distinctly  Yankee  trick.  John  Hays  Hammond, 
Jr.,  son  of  the  famous  mining  engineer,  had  been  ex- 
perimenting in  this  direction.  Some  time  before  the 
war  Mr.  Hammond,  in  the  presence  of  a  number  of 
navy  officers,  had  directed  from  the  shore  by  means  of 
wireless  impulses  a  small  boat  which  he  navigated 
around  the  harbor  of  Gloucester,  Massachusetts, 
without  the  slightest  difficulty.  So  valuable  did  this 
appear  that  Mr.  Hammond  was  asked  to  carry  on  his 
further  experiments  in  collaboration  with  government 
experts. 

The  Joint  Army  and  Navy  Board  of  Inventions 
reported  early  in  1919  that  Mr.  Hammond  had 
demonstrated  that  it  is  completely  possible  to  control 
not  only  surface  craft,  but  a  vessel  entirely  sub- 
merged, except  with  antennas  projecting  above  the 
surface,  and  the  War  Department  asked  Congress  for 
an  appropriation  of  $417,000  for  the  construction  of 
such  a  craft.  Mr.  Hammond's  patents  have  been 
taken  from  the  Patent  Office  and  placed  in  the  secret 
files  of  the  government.  No  other  nation  possesses 
this  secret,  which  would  make  it  possible  to  direct 
a  ship  loaded  with  explosives,  a  submarine  without  a 
crew,  or  a  torpedo,  against  a  hostile  ship  either  from 
a  shore  station  or  a  naval  vessel. 

For  peace-time  service,  however,  the  wireless  tele- 
phone and  the  radio  compass  are  the  two  triumphs  of 
Yankee  ingenuity  in  radio  communication  that  carry 
promise  of  greatest  usefulness.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
conceive  of  many  important  uses  of  the  wireless 
telephone.  An  important  use  of  the  airplane  is  ex- 
pected to  be  in  the  Forest  Patrol  Service.  From 


256      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

an  airplane  the  beginning  of  a  forest  fire  can  be  de- 
tected and  the  observer  can  telephone  to  all  the  forest 
patrols  in  the  vicinity  of  the  blaze,  giving  them  the 
exact  location  of  the  fire  and  thus  making  it  possible 
to  save  millions  of  feet  of  timber  and  perhaps  thou- 
sands of  human  lives.  And  a  similar  extension  of  the 
wireless  compass  system  to  include  not  only  the 
approaches  to  ports,  but  all  the  oceans,  will  make 
navigation,  even  under  the  most  adverse  conditions, 
as  simple  as  finding  one's  way  under  the  electric  lights 
of  Broadway. 


XIV 

COTTON   BALLOONS   AND    FIRE-PROOF   DIRIGIBLES 

BECAUSE  so  much  has  been  said  and  written 
about  military  and  naval  airplanes  and  flying- 
boats  the  impression  prevails  that  the  dirigible  bal- 
loon has  proved  a  failure  and  that  lighter-than-air 
types  of  aircraft  are  of  no  importance.  Quite  the 
contrary  is  true.  The  so-called  "sausage"  type  of 
captive  balloon  is  one  of  the  most  important  elements 
in  the  observation  service  of  war  on  land,  as  is  the 
kite  balloon,  which  is  sent  up  from  the  deck  of  a  ship 
for  observation  at  sea.  The  dirigible  itself  is  regarded 
by  many  competent  authorities  as  holding  possi- 
bilities for  the  future  of  aerial  navigation  excelling 
in  commercial  importance  those  of  the  airplane,  while 
it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  German  Zeppelins  did 
far  more  damage  and  proved  a  greater  menace  in  the 
Great  War  than  all  the  German  airplanes. 

It  is  highly  significant  that  among  the  peace  con- 
ditions imposed  upon  Germany  by  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles  is  the  rigid  stipulation  against  the  con- 
struction or  maintenance  of  Zeppelins  or  any  other 
type  of  dirigible.  Moreover,  it  was  disclosed,  after 
the  termination  of  hostilities,  that  the  British  govern- 
ment had  adopted  the  Zeppelin  or  rigid  type  of  dirig- 
ible balloon  and  had  actually  constructed  a  craft  of 
this  sort,  a  larger  and  more  powerful  balloon  than 
anything  Germany  had  ever  produced.  This  craft, 


258      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  "R-34,"  made  a  successful  voyage  from  the 
British  Islands  to  the  United  States  and  back  in  the 
summer  of  1919.  A  very  important  part  of  our  own 
Navy  Department's  program  for  the  future  consists 
in  material  additions  to  the  fleet  of  dirigible  balloons. 
Up  to  the  end  of  the  war  we  had  not  built  in  this 
country  any  dirigibles  of  the  rigid  or  Zeppelin  type, 
but  we  had  acquired  a  considerable  fleet  of  non-rigid 
dirigibles,  known  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean  by  the 
slangy  nickname  of  ' '  blimps. ' '  And  it  is  due  to  Yankee 
ingenuity  that  the  dirigible  balloon  is  now  the  safest 
of  all  types  of  aircraft. 

Instead  of  the  dirigible  being  a  failure,  the  German 
Zeppelins  were  in  every  respect,  except  that  of  extreme 
vulnerability  to  direct  attack,  a  great  success.  With 
two  exceptions,  every  one  of  the  Zeppelins  that  was 
brought  down  by  the  Allies  during  the  war  was 
destroyed  by  being  set  on  fire  in  midair.  Nothing 
could  be  a  worse  fire-insurance  risk  than  the  Zeppelin, 
with  its  huge  gas-bag  filled  with  the  most  inflammable 
of  all  gases,  hydrogen.  But  until  Yankee  resourceful- 
ness discovered  a  means  of  producing  a  gas  which 
would  answer  the  same  purpose  without  being  in- 
flammable, hydrogen  was  the  one  lighter- than-air 
substance  that  was  available  in  large  quantities  for 
balloon  purposes.  And  this  meant  that  the  dirigible 
balloon,  although  capable  of  navigating  in  storms  in 
which  airplanes  could  not  venture,  free  from  the  risk 
of  sudden  falls  and  capable  of  lifting  enormously 
greater  useful  loads  than  any  airplane  yet  devised, 
was,  nevertheless,  an  extremely  perilous  craft.  In 
war  a  single  incendiary  bullet  piercing  the  envelope 
of  a  military  balloon  ignites  the  hydrogen  and  the 
balloon  crashes  to  earth  in  flames.  Even  in  peace  a 
single  spark  from  defective  electric  wiring  or  a  burst 


a 
if 

1% 


IS 


260      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  flame  from  the  engine  exhaust  might  wreck  the 
airship  with  the  loss  of  all  on  board. 

To  obtain  a  practicable  substitute  for  hydrogen 
had  been  regarded  as  impossible  until  the  problem 
was  solved  by  American  scientists.  Toward  the  end 
of  the  nineteenth  century  Lord  Rayleigh  and  Sir 
William  Ramsay  had  discovered  in  atmospheric  air  a 
gas  previously  unknown,  to  which  they  gave  the 
name  of  helium.  Helium  is  only  slightly  heavier  than 
hydrogen,  and  it  is  entirely  non-inflammable.  It 
exists  in  atmospheric  air  in  the  proportion  of  i  to 
250,000  by  volume — that  is  to  say,  in  250,000  cubic 
feet  of  air  there  is  diffused  i  cubic  foot  of  helium.  It 
had  also  been  found  in  certain  rare  minerals,  but  its 
production  had  been  only  in  the  minutest  quantities, 
at  a  laboratory  cost  of  about  $1,700  per  cubic  foot. 
When  it  is  considered  that  the  cubical  contents  of  the 
new  British  R-34  are,  roughly,  about  1,500,000  cubic 
feet,  the  cost  of  the  helium  gas  necessary  to  fill  it 
would  run  into  the  thousands  of  millions  of  dollars. 
Sir  William  Ramsay,  however,  early  in  the  war  urged 
upon  the  British  Admiralty  that  efforts  be  made  to 
discover  new  sources  of  helium  gas,  and  expressed  his 
belief  that  somewhere  a  natural  source  of  supply  of 
this  useful  element  could  be  obtained.  In  the  pursuit 
of  the  investigation  that  followed  it  was  discovered 
that  the  natural  gas  obtained  from  the  Canadian 
field  centering  at  Petrolia,  Ontario,  contained  one- 
third  of  i  per  cent,  of  helium. 

This  gave  the  clue  to  American  investigators. 
When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the  problem 
of  finding  an  adequate  supply  of  helium  and  devising 
methods  of  isolating  it  economically  was  turned  over 
to  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Mines.  In  co-opera- 
tion with  the  Navy  Department,  chemists,  geologists, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      261 

and  mineralogists  undertook  the  examination  and 
testing  of  natural  gas  produced  from  wells  in  every 
part  of  the  United  States.  In  northern  Texas,  near 


AN   ARMY    OBSERVATION    BALLOON   OF   THE    "  SAUSAGE  "   TYPE 


the  Oklahoma  line,  were  found  gases  which  contained 
a  little  more  than  i  per  cent,  of  the  element.  A  ten- 
year  lease  was  taken  by  the  government  on  the 
gas-wells  in  this  field.  Pipe  lines  were  laid  to  carry 
the  gas  to  Fort  Worth  and  other  plants  were  con- 

18 


262      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

structed  alongside  of  commercial  plants  which  were 
already  extracting  oxygen  and  nitrogen  from  the 
natural  gas.  A  third  plant  was  built  by  the  Bureau 
of  Mines  at  Petrolia,  Texas,  adjacent  to  the  gas-wells. 

After  the  presence  of  helium  in  these  Texas  gases 
had  been  determined  the  problem  of  a  method  of 
extraction  remained  to  be  solved.  Under  the  direc- 
tion of  Dr.  Frederick  G.  Cottrell,  the  chief  metal- 
lurgist of  the  Bureau  of  Mines,  to  whose  successful 
development  of  a  method  of  extracting  potash  from 
cement-kiln  dust  I  have  already  referred,  a  process 
was  developed,  consisting  of  liquefying  the  gas  at  a 
low  temperature  and  distilling  off  the  other  con- 
stituents, leaving  the  stubborn  and  inert  helium  be- 
hind. To  the  surprise  of  every  one,  it  was  found  that 
helium  could  be  produced  at  a  cost  of  not  more  than 
ten  cents  a  cubic  foot  instead  of  $1,700,  which  every 
cubic  foot  previously  produced  had  cost.  This 
brought  the  cost  of  filling  a  large  dirigible  down  to  a 
few  thousand  dollars,  and  for  "sausages"  and  kite 
balloons  the  gas  cost  became  almost  negligible,  in 
view  of  the  elimination  of  risk. 

Small  balloons  filled  with  helium  were  sent  up  near 
Washington  and  fired  at  from  airplanes  with  in- 
cendiary bullets.  These  bullets  passed  completely 
through  them  without  producing  any  effect.  Just 
before  the  signing  of  the  armistice  there  had  been 
produced  147,000  cubic  feet  of  American  helium 
ready  for  shipment  to  France.  A  small  quantity  had 
actually  reached  Europe,  and  only  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  prevented  the  carrying  out  of  a  plan  for 
sending  a  fleet  of  fire-proof  dirigibles  to  drop  bombs  on 
Germany  from  a  height  of  three  or  four  miles. 

One  important  result  of  the  obtaining  of  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  low-price  helium  is  the  redesigning  of 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      263 


A    NAVY    KITE    BALLOON 

By  this  means  observers  can  be  sent  aloft  from  the  deck  of  a  ship  to  a  height  of 

a  mile,  if  necessary,  and  discover  enemy  ships  at  a  distance  of  thirty  to  forty  miles, 

or  even  more. 


dirigibles.  Heretofore  every  aircraft  of  this  type, 
from  Zeppelins  down  to  "blimps,"  has  had  its  cargo- 
and  passenger-carrying  hulls  and  cabins  suspended 
from  the  gas-bag;  the  engines  and  propellers  have  also 


264      YANKEE   INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

been  hung  below  the  gas-bag.  This  was  necessary 
because  of  the  danger  involved  in  placing  the  engines 
too  close  to  the  gas.  In  the  new-type  rigid  dirigibles 
the  quarters  of  the  crew  and  the  engines  themselves 
can  be  provided  for  inside  the  gas-bag;  the  propeller 
shaft  can  run  through  the  main  structure  and  the  pro- 
pellers be  attached  at  the  bow  or  stern  of  the  gas-bag 
itself  instead  of  below  it. 

Although  the  helium  discovery  was  not  made  in  time 
to  be  of  actual  service  in  war,  it  will,  beyond  doubt, 
prove  immensely  valuable  in  the  development  of 
peaceful  commerce.  Other  problems  involved  in  the 
building  of  the  enormous  number  of  observation  and 
kite  balloons  necessitated  by  our  military  and  naval 
program  were,  however,  solved  early  in  our  war  career 
by  American  scientists  and  technicians. 

In  order  to  make  use  of  the  balloon  for  war 
purposes  the  government  had  practically  to  re- 
vive a  dead  industry.  The  type  of  observation 
balloon  adopted  by  our  army  was  that  designed  by 
Captain  Caquot  of  the  French  army,  after  both 
Germany  and  the  Allies  had  had  a  year  or  more  of 
experience  with  observation  balloons.  Balloon  fabric 
was  not  manufactured  in  America,  and  even  the  ma- 
terials with  which  to  make  it  were  not  readily  avail- 
able in  open  market.  But  just  as  a  method  was  found 
of  substituting  sea  island  cotton  for  linen  in  the  manu- 
facture of  airplanes,  so  a  fiber  was  found  from  which 
a  cloth  of  the  requisite  fineness  and  strength  for  bal- 
loon purposes  could  be  made.  This  fiber  is  the  long- 
staple  cotton  grown  in  southern  Arizona,  in  a  section 
which,  up  to  a  few  years  ago,  was  regarded  as  agricult- 
urally worthless,  but  which  through  irrigation  and 
cultivation  has  developed  into  the  greatest  cotton- 
producing  section  of  the  whole  worli,  in  the  number 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      265 

of  pounds  per  acre,  while  the  very  finest  grades  are 
readily  grown  there. 

The  Goodyear  Rubber  Company,  of  Akron,  Ohio, 
which  had  done  more  than  any  other  American  con- 
cern or  institution  to  promote  interest  in  ballooning, 
established  its  own  cotton  plantation  in  Arizona  a.nd, 


ML 


THE    BIGGEST   YANKEE   DIRIGIBLE 

The  C-5  started  for  a  voyaee  across  the  Atlantic  and  reached  Newfoundland  safely 
in  a  single  flight  from  Rockaway  Beach,  Long  Island.  There  being  no  shelter  at 
Newfoundland  the  craft  was  anchored  by  six  two-inch  hawsers.  A  sudden  gate 
parted  the  moorings  and  drove  the  C-s  out  to  sea,  where  she  was  lost.  Fortunately, 
no  one  was  on  board  when  the  catastrophe  occurred. 


in  co-operation  with  army  and  navy  authorities,  mills 
were  set  to  work  to  spin  and  weave  this  wonderful 
fiber  into  a  cloth  so  fine  and  at  the  same  time  so 
strong  and  so  nearly  gas-tight  as  to  be  comparable 
only  to  silk  in  its  texture.  Even  after  being  treated 
with  a  rubber  solution  to  make  it  absolutely  gas-tight 
this  new  American  balloon  fabric  is  almost  as  thin  and 
delicate  as  a  lady's  handkerchief.  Then,  too,  the 
actual  construction  of  the  observation  balloons,  the 
cutting  and  sewing  of  the  fabric,  required  special  and 
intensive  training  of  an  army  of  skilled  workers, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      267 

One  of  the  most  important  contributions  of  Amer- 
ican ingenuity  to  military  observation  is  a  method 
devised  of  running  a  telephone  wire  through  the  center 
of  the  steel  cable  by  which  the  observation  balloon  is 
anchored.  This  cable  is  attached  to  a  windlass  and 
hauled  in  to  bring  the  balloon  down,  or  let  out  if  the 
observer  needs  to  go  to  a  greater  elevation.  As  the 
observer  must  be  in  constant  communication  with  the 
headquarters  of  the  artillery  detachment  whose  fire 
he  is  directing,  uninterrupted  telephone  communica- 
tion is  essential.  With  the  telephone  wires  separate 
from  the  cable,  two  or  more  windlasses  always  re- 
quired attention;  with  the  wire  in  the  middle  of  the 
cable  it  is  not  only  less  likely  to  be  damaged,  cutting 
off  communication,  but  the  whole  operation  of  the 
observation  balloon  is  greatly  simplified. 


XV 

MOTORIZING   THE   ARMY 

UP  to  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War  in  1914 
the  speed  with  which  a  nation  at  war  could  move 
its  army  from  point  to  point  was  limited  by  the  march- 
ing speed  and  endurance  of  its  infantry  units.  Cav- 
alry could  move  a  little  faster  than  infantry  for  short 
spurts,  though  on  long  marches  men  on  foot  can  cover 
more  ground  in  a  given  time  than  horses.  Artillery 
could  move  at  about  the  same  speed  as  infantry  on 
foot.  Only  in  Germany,  where  the  railroads  have  been 
constructed  with  an  eye  to  their  military  usefulness 
as  well  as  their  commercial  value,  was  it  possible  at 
the  beginning  of  the  war  to  move  considerable  bodies 
of  troops  more  than  twelve  to  fifteen  miles  a  day 
without  running  a  serious  risk  of  separating  them  from 
their  lines  of  communication  and  supplies,  and  leaving 
them  without  adequate  artillery  support. 

While  the  motor-propelled  road  vehicles  had  been 
in  common  use  for  ten  years  and  more  prior  to  the 
opening  of  hostilities,  their  application  to  military 
purposes  had  been  so  completely  neglected  that  none 
of  the  Allied  countries,  when  the  war  began,  had  either 
motor-trucks  for  the  transport  of  troops  and  supplies, 
motor- vehicles  for  the  use  of  officers,  or  motor- tractors 
for  its  artillery.  The  first  hundred  thousand  troops 
of  the  British  regular  army,  "The  Old  Contempti- 
bles,"  were  rushed  across  Belgium  in  motor  buses,  so 


270      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

recently  diverted  from  their  peaceful  traffic  in  the 
streets  of  London  that  they  carried  with  them  to  the 
battle-fields  of  Flanders  such  signs  as  "Piccadilly 
Circus,"  "Trafalgar  Square,"  and  "Use  Pears'  Soap." 
France  sent  its  artillerymen  out  in  Paris  taxicabs  to 


THE        LIBERTY        TRUCK,  DESIGNED    BY    ARMY    ENGINEERS 

turn  the  flank  of  the  advancing  Huns  at  the  first 
battle  of  the  Marne.  One  of  the  very  biggest  of  all 
the  unsolved  war  problems,  it  was  demonstrated  at  the 
very  beginning  of  hostilities,  was  that  of  providing 
swifter  means  of  transportation  for  men,  guns,  am- 
munition, and  supplies. 

In  the  solving  of  this  problem  both  for  the  Allies 
and  for  our  own  army,  Yankee  ingenuity  played  an 
important  part.  While  no  army  had  been  completely 
motorized  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice — more  horses 


THE  FAMOUS   "F.   W.   D.,"   OR    FOUR- WHEEL-DRIVE  TRUCK 

Devised  by  army  engineers  and  built  in  huge  numbers.     It  can   go  where  ordinary 

trucks  are  hopelessly  stalled,  and  carry  a  three-ton  load  over  almobt  insurmountable 

obstacles. 


TEN-TON  CATERPILLAR  TRUCK 


272      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

and  mules  were  used  in  this  war  than  probably  in  all 
previous  wars  put  together — the  army  which  the 
United  States  was  preparing  to  throw  into  the  balance 
and  the  very  threat  of  which  turned  the  scale  against 
Germany  would  have  been  unquestionably  the  most 
mobile  military  force  that  had  ever  taken  the  field 
in  war,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  up  to  the 
entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  war  in  the  spring 
of  1917  we  had  made  practically  no  advance  since  the 
Civil  War  in  the  matter  of  army  transport.  General 
Persh ing's  Mexican  expedition  in  1916  still  relied  upon 
horses  and  mules  for  transport;  the  forces  on  the 
Mexican  border  had  a  few  passenger-cars  for  officers' 
use  and  a  few 'commercial  motor- trucks  of  oifferent 
types,  but  in  the  army  motor- vehicles  were  still 
regarded  as  unreliable  and  experimental  and  it  was 
not  until  we  found  ourselves  plunged  into  the  Euro- 
pean conflict  that  we  even  began  to  prepare  a  pro- 
gram of  motorization  for  the  army.  So  rapidly  did 
the  -development  of  motor-transport  proceed,  how- 
ever, that  in  August,  1918,  when  the  country  had  been 
sixteen  months  at  war,  there  was  established  the 
Motor  Transport  Corps,  a  new  and  independent 
branch  of  army  activities,  charged  with  the  control 
of  the  entire  field  of  mechanical  transport  which,  by 
this  time,  had  become  recognized  as  equally  important 
with  the  other  staff  corps  of  the  army. 

Under  the  control  of  the  Motor  Transport  Corps,  at 
the  termination  of  hostilities,  were  some  50,000  motor- 
vehicles,  while  with  the  application  of  mechanical 
motive  power  the  artillery  had  been  developed  to  a 
point  where,  in  the  expected  spring  and  summer  cam- 
paign of  1919,  no  unit,  no  matter  how  swiftly  it  might 
travel  in  motor-vehicles,  could  move  faster  than  the 
guns  could  keep  up  with  it. 


THE  FORD  "BABY  TANK" 


THE    AMERICAN-BUILT    RENAULT   TANK 


274      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

In  the  whole  program  of  military  motorization  the 
most  sensational  development  of  the  entire  war,  al- 
though first  practically  applied  by  the  British,  was 
distinctly  a  product  of  Yankee  ingenuity.  This  was 
the  "tank,"  which  was,  in  fact,  a  small,  mobile  fort 
mounted  on  caterpillar  tracks.  The  caterpillar  is  the 
one  distinctively  American  contribution  to  land  trans- 
port. Every  other  type  of  vehicle,  from  the  wheel- 
barrow to  the  automobile,  had  its  origin  elsewhere.  It 
was  an  American  inventor  who  conceived  the  idea  of 
mounting  a  traction  engine  on  parallel,  flexible,  end- 
less tracks,  so  that  it  could  move  over  plowed  fields  or 
grades  impassable  to  a  wheeled  vehicle.  The  cater- 
pillar tractor  for  farm  purposes  had  been  in  successful 
use  in  America  for  a  number  of  years  prior  to  the  war. 
Colonel  Swinton  of  the  British  army  conceived  the 
idea  of  building  completely  inclosed,  tanklike  bodies 
which,  when  supplied  with  caterpillar  traction,  could 
traverse  the  shell-torn  areas  of  the  battle-field,  climb 
across  trenches  and  up  and  down  embankments,  and 
bring  artillerymen  and  machine-gunners,  themselves 
protected  behind  steel  walls,  into  close  range  with  the 
enemy's  infantry. 

At  the  beginning  of  America  s  participation  in  the 
war  one  of  the  first  steps  undertaken  was  to  provide 
an  adequate  supply  of  tanks  for  the  use  of  our  army. 
Since  the  British  army  by  this  time  had  in  operation 
enormous  factory  facilities  for  the  manufacture  of 
tanks,  a  contract  was  made  between  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  by  which  we  were  to  manufacture 
the  motors  and  provide  ordnance  for  a  large  number 
of  tanks;  the  structures  and  their  mechanism  were  to 
be  manufactured  in  England.  With  the  successful 
development  of  the  Liberty  motor,  however,  experi- 
ments were  begun  with  tanks  adapted  to  the  use  of 


SEVEN-INCH   GUN   ON   RAILWAY   MOUNT 

This  mount  was  built  for  use  against  submarines  in  the  raids  along  our  coast. 


TWELVE-INCH     5O-CALIBER    LONG-RANGE    GUN    ON     SLIDING    RAILWAY 
MOUNT 

The  power  and  range  of  this  mount  are  not  exceeded  by  any  railway  mount  in  the 
world.     Its  range  is  in  excess  of  twenty-eight  miles. 


276      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

this  engine.  The  huge  3 5 -ton  tank  "America"  was 
the  most  successful  of  these,  and  by  the  end  of  the 
war  we  had  just  begun  to  manufacture  a  quantity  of 
these  large  tanks.  America  also  adopted  the  French 
Renault  tank,  building  a  quantity  of  these  on  the 
French  model,  and  later  adapted  this  model  to  Amer- 
ican methods  of  manufacture  for  the  production  of  a 
faster  and  lighter  type  of  tank  mounting  two  machine- 
guns  instead  of  one. 

America's  most  ingenious  contribution  in  the  way 
of  tanks,  however,  was  the  Ford  baby  tank.  The 
idea  of  a  light-weight,  speedy,  miniature  fort,  small 
enough  almost  to  follow  a  squirrel  track  through  the 
woods,  appealed  strongly  to  Henry  Ford,  who  began 
the  experimental  development  of  this  device  in  1917. 
In  June,  1918,  I  had  the  opportunity  to  see  the  tests 
of  the  first  completed  Ford  tank  of  the  type  finally 
decided  upon.  "Nimble"  is  the  word  that  best 
describes  this  miniature  engine  of  war.  It  has  been 
said  of  the  Ford  car  that  it  will  climb  anything — even 
the  side  of  a  house.  The  tank  literally  did  exactly 
that!  It  climbed  a  sloping  structure  at  an  angle  of 
less  than  45  degrees  from  the  vertical  without  the 
slightest  difficulty.  It  went  down  embankments  that 
were  almost  straight  up  and  down,  stood  on  its  nose 
in  ditches  four  and  five  feet  deep  and  backed  out 
again  without  injury,  scooted  at  twenty  miles  an  hour 
over  rough,  plowed  ground,  stopped  and  turned  in- 
stantly in  its  own  length,  and  from  a  little  distance 
irresistibly  reminded  one  of  a  playful  animal  disport- 
ing itself — an  animal  combining,  as  it  were,  the  quali- 
ties of  the  mud-turtle  and  the  rabbit. 

Inside  the  Ford  tank  are  two  men  and  one  machine- 
gun.  The  machinery  consists  of  two  ordinary  Ford 
engines,  one  for  each  side  of  the  caterpillar  mechanism. 


CATERPILLAR   TRACTOR   DRAWING  A   6-INCH   GUN 


LIGHT  CATERPILLAR  TRACTOR   FOR  HAULING  3-INCH   GUN 


278      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

By  running  one  engine  forward  and  reversing  the  other 
the  baby  tank  can  be  made  to  spin  like  a  top.  The 
machine-gun  is  so  mounted  that  the  gunner  is  per- 
fectly protected  against  anything  short  of  artillery 
fire,  while  himself  able  to  pump  lead  in  any  direction. 

It  was  in  the  application  of  the  caterpillar  principle 
to  other  tractive  transportation  purposes  that  Yankee 
ingenuity  scored  even  more  heavily  than  in  the  matter 
of  tanks.  With  good  road 3,  or  even  passably  good 
roads,  the  motor- truck  mounted  on  ordinary  wheels 
is  adequate  for  all  practical  purposes.  With  bad 
roads,  or  no  roads  at  all — and  there  is  never  a  guar- 
anty that  an  army  in  movement  is  going  to  find  roads 
exactly  where  it  wants  them — the  advantages  of  the 
caterpillar  are  obvious,  since  it  lays  its  own  road  as 
it  goes  along.  The  handicap  of  the  caterpillar,  as 
previously  developed,  had  been  its  low  speed;  four 
miles  an  hour  was  fast  enough  for  agricultural  tractor 
purposes  and  nobody  had  tried  to  build  caterpillars 
that  would  move  any  faster.  It  was  merely  a  matter 
of  mechanical  ingenuity  and  design,  and  before  we 
had  been  a  year  at  war  our  engineers  had  speeded 
up  the  caterpillar  to  twenty  miles  an  hour.  In  the 
autumn  of  1918  I  rode  across  the  Aberdeen  proving- 
ground  near  Baltimore  in  a  caterpillar  motor-truck, 
running  a  race  with  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War, 
Benedict  Crowell,  who  was  riding  on  a  caterpillar  gun- 
caisson.  Our  speedometers  registered  above  sixteen 
miles  an  hour  over  very  rough  ground;  the  jolting  and 
jarring  were  very  much  less  than  would  have  been  the 
case  with  wheeled  vehicles  on  the  same  sort  of  terrain. 

Perhaps  the  ingenious  idea  of  mounting  heavy 
artillery  on  caterpillar  carriages  ranks  first  among  the 
artillery  innovations  introduced  into  warfare  by 
America.  An  8-inch  howitzer  is  a  terrific  weapon. 


SQUADRON   OF   AMERICAN   RENAULT  TANKS   GOING   INTO   ACTION 


AMERICAN    TANK   IN    ACTION 


28o      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Twenty  horses  are  ordinarily  used  to  pull  one,  and 
by  such  means  it  can  be  moved  very  slowly  indeed. 
Mounted  on  a  caterpillar  carriage,  it  can  go  anywhere 
as  fast  as  an  army  can  move,  even  faster,  and  it  can 
make  its  own  road,  not  only  through  underbrush,  but 
through  thick  woods.  I  saw  this  caterpillar-mounted 
howitzer  move  through  a  patch  of  woods  at  Aberdeen, 
bearing  down  big  trees  by  its  own  weight  and  the 
force  of  its  impact.  One  tree  measured  seventeen 
inches  through  at  the  butt;  many  of  them  were  more 
than  ten  inches  in  diameter.  The  gun  moved  through 
the  woods  as  easily  as  an  elephant  through  a  bamboo 
jungle. 

Caterpillar  tractors,  speeded  up  for  hauling  guns  of 
all  sizes  and  for  ammunition  caissons,  were  developed. 
Out  of  the  experience  obtained  in  the  application  of 
the  caterpillar  principle  to  all  sorts  of  purposes  it  is 
obvious  that  many  new  applications  of  this  distinc- 
tively American  type  of  vehicle  will  be  made  in  peace- 
time commerce.  In  rough  or  sparsely  settled  country, 
where  the  amount  of  traffic  does  not  justify  the  ex- 
pense of  building  and  maintaining  good  roads,  the 
speeded-up  caterpillar  provides  means  of  transporta- 
tion peculiarly  adapted  to  such  pioneer  service.  In 
rough  and  mountainous  country,  where  ordinary 
mo  tor- trucks  cannot  be  used,  the  caterpillar  trucks 
can  be  utilized  for  hauling  ore  from  isolated  mines  and 
for  similar  purposes. 

America's  chief  contribution  to  the  problem  of  the 
motor-truck  in  war,  apart  from  the  caterpillar  devel- 
opment, was  the  four-wheel-drive  truck.  This  type  of 
vehicle,  in  which  the  motive  power  is  applied  equally 
to  all  wheels  instead  of  only  to  the  two  rear  wheels, 
thoroughly  demonstrated  its  war  usefulness.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  better  distribution  of  tractive  power,  it 


EIGHT-INCH    GUN   ON   RAILWAY    MOUNT 


SIXTEEN-INCH    HOWITZER    RAILWAY  MOUNT  SHOWN  IN  FIRING  POSITION 
AT   MAXIMUM   ANGLE   OF   ELEVATION 

This  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  howitzers  in  the  world. 


282      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

has  the  advantage  of  being  able  to  move  in  either 
direction  with  equal  ease  and  speed,  a  consideration 
often  of  the  greatest  usefulness  on  narrow  roadways 
where  there  is  no  room  to  turn. 

More  emphatically  than  in  any  previous  war  the 
importance  of  artillery  was  emphasized  in  this  one. 
All  artillery  development,  except  that  of  guns  per- 
manently mounted  in  fortifications  or  on  floating  gun- 
platforms,  such  as  battle-ships,  had  been  limited,  as  I 
have  said,  by  the  speed  and  power  of  the  horse.  The 
horse  can  pull  continuously  about  650  pounds  on 
level  ground.  It  took  a  team  of  six  horses  to  pull  a 
3 -inch  gun  before  this  war,  and  indeed  almost  up  to 
the  end  of  the  war  this  size  of  gun  was  the  largest  that 
could  be  regarded  as  mobile  artillery,  in  the  sense  of 
being  able  to  fire  a  few  shots  and  then  change  its 
position  quickly  before  the  enemy  could  get  its 
range.  The  caterpillar  not  only  made  the  3 -inch  gun 
more  mobile,  but  made  guns  up  to  8-inch  caliber 
mobile  artillery. 

Yankee  ingenuity  went  even  farther  than  that. 
When  the  armistice  was  signed  we  had  on  the  Euro- 
pean front  i4-inch  rifles  with  a  range  of  nearly 
thirty  miles  that  were  almost  as  completely  mobile 
as  the  3 -inch  guns  of  five  years  before;  we  had  even 
heavier  weapons  than  these,  1 6-inch  howitzers,  lack- 
ing but  an  inch  of  the  bore  of  the  "Big  Berthas,"  the 
4 2 -centimeter  Skoda  howitzers  with  which  the  Hun 
battered  down  the  supposedly  impregnable  fortifica- 
tions of  Liege  at  the  outset  of  the  war.  We  had  12- 
inch  guns  50  feet  long,  capable  of  throwing  2,ooo-pound 
shells  twenty  miles,  and  so  completely  mobile  that 
one  of  them  could  be  advanced  to  firing  position,  fired 
half  a  dozen  times,  and  removed  to  a  point  of  safety 
or  another  fighting  position  several  miles  away  within 


THIS   IS   ONE    OF   THE    SURPRISES    WE    HAD   IN   STORE   FOR   FRITZ, 
AN   EIGHT-INCH    HOWITZER    ON   A   CATERPILLAR   MOUNT 


TWELVE-INCH   MORTAR   ON   RAILWAY  MOUNT 

This  picture  shows  the  heavy  mortar  on  railway  mount  at  maximum  elevation  in 
position  for  firing  against  ammunition  dumps  and  dugouts. 


284      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  space  of  an  hour.  We  had  larger  numbers  still 
of  great  y-inch  guns  and  of  1 2-inch  mortars,  all  equally 
mobile. 

These  were  the  guns,  howitzers,  and  mortars  on 
railway  mounts.  By  the  time  America  entered  the 
war  it  had  become  obvious  that  one  of  the  most  press- 
ing needs  of  the  Allies  was  more  heavy  artillery.  Our 
army  canvassed  the  supply  and  found  464  heavy  guns, 
ranging  in  size  from  the  7 -inch  navy  guns  to  1 6 -inch 
howitzers.  There  were  6  12 -inch  naval  guns  that 
had  been  manufactured  in  this  country  for  the 
Chilean  government;  there  were  96  8-inch,  129  10- 
inch,  and  49  1 2-inch  seacoast-defense  guns,  and  150 
i2-inch  mortars.  All  of  these  that  could  be  spared 
were  taken  and  the  manufacture  of  other  guns  was 
pressed,  while  railway  mounts  were  constructed  for 
these  different  types  of  weapons.  The  problem  that 
had  to  be  solved  was  first  to  build  a  railway  carriage 
sufficiently  strong  to  carry  the  mounted  guns,  then  to 
adapt  this  carriage  to  either  standard-gage  or  narrow- 
gage  tracks,  and  then  to  provide  means  for  absorbing 
the  tremendous  recoil  pressure  at  the  moment  of 
firing. 

This  latter  problem  was  solved  in  two  ways.  Some 
of  the  guns  were  so  mounted  that,  by  an  ingenious 
arrangement  of  jacks,  the  gun  crew,  once  the  carriage 
had  reached  the  point  from  which  the  gun  was  to  be 
fired,  could  in  a  minute  literally  lift  the  carriage  off  the 
tracks,  leaving  it  supported  by  the  jacks,  each  of 
which  had  a  sliding  contact  with  the  rails.  By  this 
means,  when  the  gun  was  fired,  instead  of  the  carriage 
rolling  thirty  or  forty  feet  along  the  tracks  and  requir- 
ing a  recalculation  of  the  aim  and  trajectory,  it  slid 
but  a  few  inches,  not  enough  in  most  cases  to  disturb 
the  predetermined  aim.  For  the  smaller  railway 


A    BLACKSMITH  -  SHOP,    FORGE,     ANVIL,     AND    ALL,    AND    AN    ELECTRIC 
WELDING    OUTFIT    E^UIP    THIS    UNIT    OF   THE   ROLLING   MACHINE-SHOP 


A  PORTABLE  SAWMILL  CONSTITUTES  ONE    UNIT  OF  THE  MACHINE-SHOP 
ON   WHEELS 


286      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

mounted  guns  braces  were  provided  for  the  carriages 
so  that  the  whole  apparatus  was  firmly  held  in  a 
fixed  position.  This  method,  however,  involved  a 
great  deal  more  time  and  labor  in  getting  the  gun  ready 
to  fire. 

All  of  the  guns  mounted  by  the  army  on  railway 
mounts  were  so  fixed  that  they  could  be  fired  in  almost 


ONE  OF     THE  UNITS  OF  THE  MACHINE-SHOP  ON  WHEELS;   THIS  TRAILER 
TRUCK  CARRIES   A   DRILL-PRESS   AND   A   POWER   SHAPER 


any  direction;  the  7 -inch  navy  rifles  were  mounted  on 
pedestals  set  on  the  gun-car  in  such  a  way  that  they 
could  be  fired  in  any  direction  around  a  complete 
circle.  These  guns  could  likewise  be  depressed  so  as 
to  fire  from  an  elevation  at  a  submarine  offshore,  it 
being  the  purpose  to  use  them  for  coast-defense  work 
particularly. 

The  largest  American  guns  that  actually  reached 
the  front  were  five  of  the  1 4-inch  navy  guns,  mounted 
and  operated  by  the  navy.  These  guns  were  placed 
on  a  specially  designed  type  of  railway  mount  and 
rendered  effective  service  in  the  last  few  weeks  before 
the  signing  of  the  armistice. 


THE    GENERATOR  MOUNTED  ON   A  TRAILER   TRUCK 

The   generator  has   its   own  direct-coupled   gasolene-engine   and   furnishes   electric 
current  to  operate  all  the  other  machines  that  make  up  the  machine-shop  on  wheels. 


NO    MACHINE-SHOP     IS     COMPLETE    WITHOUT    A    STOCK-ROOM    FOR    MA- 
TERIALS  AND   SPARE   PARTS;    THE   MACHINE-SHOP   ON    WHEELS    HAS 

THIS   UNIT,   TOO. 


288      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Like  the  rest  of  American  war  preparations,  the 
gigantic  plan  for  mobile  artillery  of  every  size  and 
caliber  was  cut  short  just  as  its  important  elements 
were  approaching  the  peak  of  production.  When  it  is 
considered  that  in  this  work,  as  in  many  other  lines  of 
military  preparation,  absolutely  new  ground  had  to  be 
broken,  plants  equipped,  workmen  trained,  and  every- 
thing done  as  though  nothing  of  the  sort  had  ever 
been  attempted  before,  the  success  actually  achieved 
appears  as  a  triumph  of  American  manufacturing 
resourcefulness. 

Just  as  the  war  ended  we  had  finally  perfected  a 
method  by  which  a  machine-shop,  equipped  to  repair 
anything  from  heavy  artillery  to  a  mule's  halter, 
could  travel  with  the  army  and  keep  pace  with  even 
the  speediest  of  its  motorized  units.  This  traveling 
machine-shop  consisted  of  three  motor-tractor  trucks, 
each  hauling  three  trailers.  On  each  vehicle,  tractor 
and  trailer  alike,  was  mounted  some  part  of  a  complete 
machine-shop  unit.  There  were  lathes,  drill-presses, 
planers,  and  other  power-driven  machine-tools,  each 
having  its  own  electric  motor;  on  one  truck  was 
mounted  an  electric  generator,  direct-connected  to  a 
gasolene-engine.  This  furnished  electric  power  for 
the  whole  plant  and  current  for  searchlights  to  enable 
even  the  most  delicate  machine  operations  to  be  done 
at  night.  Air-compressors  for  certain  classes  of  work 
were  mounted  on  another  truck;  one  carried  a  com- 
plete blacksmith-shop,  another  a  harness-shop  with 
a  power  sewing-machine.  On  another  was  a  car- 
penter's complete  equipment,  while  a  most  important 
part  of  the  outfit  was  the  traveling  stock-room,  a 
truck  fitted  with  innumerable  drawers,  bins,  racks, 
and  cupboards  for  carrying  every  sort  of  material 
that  might  be  required  for  repairs  in  the  field. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      289 

The  platforms  of  all  the  vehicles  in  the  unit  were 
of  equal  height,  and  all  had  sides  and  ends  hinged  so 
they  could  be  lowered  to  a  horizontal  position,  and 
supported  by  props,  making  extension  platforms  af- 
fording ample  working  space  around  each  group  of 
machines. 


XVI 

YANKEE    WEAPONS 

T"**HE  backbone  of  an  army  is  its  infantrymen,  and 
J-  the  weapon  of  the  infantryman  is  his  rifle.  I 
do  not  think  the  most  captious  critic  will  dispute  the 
statement  that  the  American  infantryman,  taking 
him  by  and  large,  is  the  best  marksman  in  the  world, 
and  it  would  be  unsafe,  in  the  presence  of  an  American 
doughboy,  to  dispute  the  assertion  that  the  American 
infantry  rifle,  the  Springfield,  model  1903,  is  the  best 
rifle  ever  made,  with  the  Springfield,  model  1917,  the 
modified  Enfield,  the  only  other  infantry  weapon  that 
even  approaches  our  standard  arm  for  all-around 
military  use. 

Just  as  the  pioneer  life  of  our  forefathers  compelled 
the  development  of  skill  with  the  rifle  and  established 
an  American  tradition  of  marksmanship  which  has 
not  been  permitted  to  die  out,  so  American  inventors 
have  been  responsible  for  every  important  improve- 
ment in  small-arms  for  more  than  a  century.  Even 
the  automatic  pistol,  credit  for  which  was  claimed 
originally  by  Germany,  was  a  deliberate  theft  of  a 
Yankee  idea,,  as  any  one  who  cares  to  inspect  the 
models  in  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington  may 
prove  to  his  own  satisfaction.  The  first  improvement 
over  the  old-fashioned  flint-lock,  the  percussion  cap, 
was  a  Yankee  invention.  So  was  the  breech-loading 
rifle,  and  likewise  the  repeating  rifle;  the  revolver  was 


8 

J 
II 


1 1 


292      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

an  American  invention,  and  so,  too,  was  the  machine- 
gun. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  in  Europe  the  demand 
for  rifles  for  the  British,  French,  and  Russian  armies 
was  so  far  greater  than  their  manufacturers  were  able 
to  supply  that  they  called  upon  America  for  help; 
so  when  this  country  entered  the  war  we  had  a  number 
of  well-equipped  factories  that  had  been  for  over  a 


Top SPRINGFIELD,       MODEL       1917       (MODIFIED       ENFIELD) ;       ROLLED 

BAYONET,   MODEL    1917 
Bottom — SPRINGFIELD,    MODEL    1903;   BAYONET,   MODEL    1905 

year  producing  rifles  in  enormous  quantities  for  these 
foreign  governments.  We  had  on  hand  about  600,000 
of  the  model  1903  Springfield,  with  manufacturing 
capacity  at  our  government  arsenals  of  only  about 
700  a  day.  To  adopt  the  British  weapon  would  have 
involved  changing  our  ammunition.  The  problem 
was  solved  by  making  certain  modifications  in  the 
British  Enfield  rifle  so  that  it  took  the  same  ammuni- 
tion and  the  same  sights  as  the  old  Springfield.  This 
modified  Enfield  became  the  Springfield,  model  1917, 
and  with  it  we  armed  nearly  three  million  soldiers. 

Yankee  ingenuity  had  even  a  better  opportunity 
than  this  to  play  its  part  in  the  equipment  of  our 
infantrymen.  In  this  war  as  never  before  the  ma- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      293 

chine-gun  was  one  of  the  most  important  weapons 
used  by  all  the  armies  in  the  field.  Two  distinctly 
American  types  of  machine-guns  ranked  among  the 
most  important  American  triumphs  of  the  war.  These 
are  the  Lewis  and  the  Browning  guns.  Another 
American  machine-gun,  the  Marlin,  became  the 
standard  arm  for  airplane  pilots.  The  original  ma- 


LEWIS  MACHINE-GUN,   MODEL    IQI7 

chine-gun,  the  invention  of  Dr.  Richard  J.  Gatling, 
was  brought  out  in  1861,  and  was  really  a  revolving 
rifle  consisting  of  a  number  of  barrels  rotating  around 
the  central  axis  and  firing  in  turn.  It  was  another 
American  inventor,  who  later  became  a  British  sub- 
ject, Sir  Hiram  Maxim,  who  developed  the  single- 
barrel  machine-gun,  operating  automatically  by  its 
own  recoil.  But  when  the  war  in  Europe  began  there 
had  been  developed  two  machine-guns  which  had  all 
the  advantages  of  the  rapid-firing  mechanism  of  these 
and  similar  weapons,  and  besides  were  light  enough 
so  one  man  could  carry  them.  These  were  the 
French  Benet-Mercier  and  the  American  Lewis  guns. 
The  Lewis  gun,  although  the  invention  of  Col.  Isaac 
N.  Lewis,  of  the  United  States  army,  had  been  re- 

20 


294      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

jected  by  the  American  military  authorities,  but 
adopted  by  the  British,  and  large  numbers  of  these 
guns  were  made  in  America  for  the  British  army  in 
the  early  years  of  the  war.  The  Lewis  gun  is  dif- 
ferent from  all  other  machine-guns  in  that  the  car- 
tridges, instead  of  being  fed  into  the  chamber  from  a 
web  or  strip,  are  fed  from  a  magazine  which  revolves 
horizontally  around  a  vertical  axis.  As  developed 
for  the  use  of  American  aircraft,  the  Lewis  gun  maga- 
zine carries  ninety-six  cartridges  and  can  be  fired  at 
the  rate  of  more  than  300  shots  a  minute. 

The  Lewis  gun  weighs  only  twenty-five  pounds,  this 
being  one  of  its  principal  advantages  over  earlier 
types  of  machine-guns,  which  were  water-cooled — • 
that  is,  the  barrel  was  surrounded  by  a  water-jacket 
to  keep  it  from  overheating  when  fired  continuously. 
For  aircraft  use,  where  the  firing  is  not  continuous, 
but  in  short  "bursts,"  so  called,  the  cooling  problem 
is  not  a  serious  one,  and  the  Lewis  gun  proved  ad- 
mirably adapted  for  this  purpose.  It  may  really  be 
called  the  first  successful  air-cooled  machine-gun; 
many  previous  attempts  at  an  air-cooled  machine-gun 
had  been  made  by  American  and  foreign  inventors; 
all  of  these  overheated  when  fired  continuously  for 
any  length  of  time,  some  of  them  becoming  so  hot 
that  the  barrels  became  soft  and  bent  out  of  shape. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  then,  we 
had  the  Lewis  gun,  which  had  not  been  officially 
adopted  by  the  army,  but  which  was  being  manu- 
factured in  limited  quantities  in  this  country  for  the 
British  government  by  the  Savage  Arms  Corporation, 
of  Utica,  New  York.  There  was  also  being  manu- 
factured for  the  Russian  government  the  old-fashioned 
type  of  Colt  machine-gun,  being  made  by  the  Marlin, 
Rockwell  Corporation,  at  Syracuse,  New  York.  The 


THE     COLT    DOUBLE-ACTION    .45  -CALIBER    REVOLVER 

The  Yankee  "  six-shooter  "  that  has  been  the  standard  side-arm  of  the  American 
army  for  more  than  half  a  century. 


THE   COLT    45-CALIBER   AUTOMATIC    PISTOL 

The  standard  army  weapon  of  this  type  carrying  seven  cartridges  in  the  hollow 
butt.     Another  Yankee  invention. 


296      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

facilities  available  for  machine-gun  production,  how- 
ever, were  extremely  limited.  Such  as  they  were,  they 
were  taken  over  by  the  government,  but  the  impor- 
tance of  the  machine-gun  as  an  infantry  arm  had  by 
this  time  become  so  evident  that  it  was  necessary  to 
focus  all  possible  efforts  on  the  development  of  some 
type  of  gun  that  would  answer  all  the  purposes  of 
modern  warfare  and  at  the  same  time  be  capable  of 
production  in  huge  quantities. 

In  this  emergency  there  came  forward  a  man  un- 
known to  the  general  public,  but  known  to  manu- 
facturers of  weapons  throughout  the  world  as  a 
genius  of  rare  order,  whose  inventive  talents  were 
responsible  for  almost  every  important  improvement 
in  small-arms  for  more  than  forty  years — John  M. 
Browning.  His  identity  buried  for  more  than  four 
decades  under  the  names  of  the  great  manufacturing 
corporations  whose  chief  output  was  the  product  of 
his  fertile  brain,  this  square- jawed  Yankee  mechanical 
genius  brought  to  the  War  Department  early  in  May, 
1917,  three  new  types  of  machine-guns,  each  designed 
for  a  particular  and  specific,  separate  use,  and  each 
of  them  so  far  in  advance  of  anything  that  had  pre- 
viously been  developed  that  it  took  less  than  a  month 
of  tests  to  determine  their  superiority  and  insure  their 
adoption  by  the  United  States  army  as  its  standard 
machine-gun  equipment.  John  M.  Browning,  who 
thus  suddenly  leaped  into  fame  through  the  contro- 
versies in  Congress  and  in  the  newspapers  over  the 
respective  merits  of  his  weapon  and  the  Lewis  gun, 
is  the  inventor  of  nearly  every  one  of  the  Winchester 
rifles,  from  the  model  of  1873  to  that  of  1906.  He 
invented  the  auto-loading  shot-gun  and  the  auto- 
loading rifle,  known  throughout  the  world  by  the 
name  of  the  Remington  Arms  Company.  He  was 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       297 

responsible  for  the  perfection  of  the  Stevens  12 -gage 
repeating  shot-gun.  It  was  John  M.  Browning  who 
invented  the  Colt  automatic  machine-gun,  which  had 
been  our  standard  army  weapon  up  to  1917.  He  had 
designed  all  the  Colt  automatic  pistols;  he  was  the 


SMITH  &  WESSON  DOUBLE- ACTION  REVOLVER,  CALIBER  .45,  MODEL  1917 

patentee  of  the  .4 5 -caliber  automatic  pistol,  which 
was  the  standard  side-arm  of  the  United  States  army. 
None  of  his  inventions  was  known  in  this  country 
by  his  name,  but  in  Belgium,  where  the  manufacture 
of  small-arms  had  been  perfected  long  before  the  war 
to  a  higher  degree  than  in  any  other  country  in  the 
world,  the  name  of  Browning  was  synonymous  with 
high-grade  repeating  rifles,  shot-guns,  and  pistols,  and 
in  1914  the  manufacture  of  the  one-millionth  Browning 
pistol  in  the  Belgian  National  Armory  at  Liege  had 
been  celebrated  by  the  bestowal  upon  the  Yankee 
inventor  of  the  Belgian  Royal  Order  of  King  Leopold. 
The  three  types  of  Browning  machine-gun  are  the 
"heavy"  or  water-cooled  gun,  the  "light"  air-cooled 


298      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

gun  or  automatic  rifle,  and  the  Browning  airplane-gun. 
The  water-cooled  Browning  gun  weighs  only  twenty- 
five  pounds,  the  lightest  weight  of  any  water-cooled 
machine-gun.  The  old  Colt  machine-gun,  also  Brown- 
ing's invention,  depended  for  its  automatic  action 
upon  the  pressure  of  explosion  gases  operating  against 
a  piston.  The  new  Browning  gun  uses  the  force  of 
the  recoil  to  operate  the  mechanism  which  automati- 
cally ejects  the  shell  of  the  cartridge  just  fired,  resets 
the  firing  mechanism,  and  feeds  in  a  fresh  cartridge. 
The  only  heavy  machine-guns  that  had  previously 
utilized  the  recoil  for  this  purpose  were  the  Maxim 
and  the  British  Vickers.  It  is  the  ideal  principle 
for  rapid  firing ;  the  gun  automatically  continues  to 
fire  as  fast  as  cartridges  can  be  fed  into  it  from  the 
web  belt  which  carries  the  cartridges  in  loops.  It  will 
not  stop  firing  until  the  cartridges  are  exhausted  or 
the  release  of  the  trigger  automatically  blocks  the 
firing  mechanism.  The  old  Maxim  gun,  regarded  as 
perhaps  the  best  of  the  water-cooled  machine-guns, 
gave  off  puffs  of  steam  as  the  water  in  the  cooling 
jacket  became  heated;  in  the  Boer  War  these  puffs  of 
steam  enabled  the  sharp-sighted  Boers  to  locate  the 
British  Maxim  gunners  and  to  pick  them  off  with  their 
deadly  long-range  rifles.  The  Browning  gun  has  a 
completely  inclosed  water-circulating  apparatus,  so 
that  no  steam  escapes  into  the  air  to  betray  the 
gunners'  position.  With  its  water-jacket  filled  the 
Browning  heavy  gun  weighs  only  36%  pounds,  making 
it  easily  transportable  by  infantry. 

Simultaneously  with  the  water-cooled  gun,  John  M. 
Browning  offered  a  light  machine-gun  or,  more  prop- 
erly speaking,  an  automatic  rifle,  weighing  only  fifteen 
pounds.  This  is  a  gun  that  can  be  fired  from  the 
shoulder  and  which  will  continue  to  fire  automatically 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR       299 

so  long  as  the  marksman  keeps  his  finger  on  the  trigger 
and  the  supply  of  cartridges  is  kept  up.  The  car- 
tridges for  the  Browning  automatic  rifle  are  fed  in  in 
clips  of  twenty  at  a  time;  the  twenty  shots  are  fired 
in  a  quarter  that  number  of  seconds.  It  takes  less 


HEAVY   BROWNING  MACHINE-GUN 

than  a  second  to  slip  a  new  set  into  place.  There 
had  been  automatic  rifles  before,  but  none  that  equaled 
the  Browning  in  simplicity  of  construction  and  opera- 
tion or  that  compared  with  it  in  weight.  The  15- 
pound  gun,  although  nearly  twice  as  heavy  as  the 
standard  military  rifle,  is  not  too  heavy  for  a  strong 
man  to  fire  efficiently  from  the  shoulder.  Many  old- 


3co      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

fashioned  duck  guns,  as  well  as  the  elephant  rifles  used 
by  African  hunters,  weigh  more  than  this. 

The  Browning  aircraft  rifle  is  in  all  essentials  the 
Browning  heavy  machine-gun  with  water-jacket  re- 
moved. As  I  have  pointed  out,  an  air-cooled  ma- 
chine-gun can  be  used  in  aerial  fighting,  and  this  gun 
has  the  advantage  for  this  purpose  over  the  automatic 
rifle  in  that  the  cartridge  supply  from  a  continuous 
belt  or  web  requires  little  or  no  attention  from  the 
aerial  operator  of  the  gun.  For  aircraft  purposes  the 
firing  mechanism  of  the  Browning  gun  was  so  altered 
as  to  double  the  rate  of  fire,  and  devices  for  synchro- 
nizing this  gun  for  firing  between  the  propeller  blades 
were  also  perfected.  The  Browning  airplane-gun, 
however,  had  not  got  into  production  sufficiently  to 
equip  our  aerial  forces  by  the  time  the  armistice  was 
signed.  The  Lewis  gun  became  the  standard  arm 
for  aerial  warfare,  with  the  Marlin  machine-gun,  a 
development  of  the  old  Colt  gun,  for  use  in  fixed 
position  in  front  of  the  pilot  and  synchronized  with  the 
propeller  as  I  have  described  in  a  previous  chapter. 

As  in  the  case  of  every  other  important  item  of 
military  equipment,  America's  problem  had  only  just 
begun  when  the  type  and  design  of  the  Browning 
gun  had  been  determined  upon  and  accepted  by  the 
army.  To  manufacture  these  guns,  as  to  manu- 
facture any  other  device  requiring  a  multiplicity  of 
precisely  sized  and  carefully  fitted  parts,  meant,  first, 
an  enormous  work  of  preparation  of  drawings,  ma- 
chines, and  tools,  the  provision  of  a  continuous  supply 
of  raw  materials,  and  the  enlistment  of  a  veritable 
army  of  skilled  workmen  to  operate  the  machines  and 
assemble  the  finished  parts.  It  was  May,  1918,  before 
the  first  Browning  automatic  rifles  were  turned  out 
by  the  Winchester  Company,  the  first  Browning  heavy 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      301 

machine-gun  by  the  Westinghouse  and  Remington 
companies,  and  June  before  the  Colt  Company  had 
begun  to  produce  these.  By  the  end  of  July,  1918, 
however,  10,000  heavy  Brownings  had  been  made, 


JROWNING   TANK-GUN    MOUNTED   IN   TANK 


and  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice  there  had  been  de- 
livered to  the  government  42,000  of  the  heavy  Brown- 
ing guns  and  52,238  light  Browning  automatic  rifles. 
When,  in  the  spring  of  1918,  it  became  evident  that 
a  special  machine-gun  would  be  required  for  use  in 
tanks,  the  development  of  a  Browning  tank  machine- 
gun  was  begun.  This  was  the  heavy  Browning  water- 
cooled  gun  with  the  water-jacket  eliminated  and  an 
air-cooled  barrel  of  heavy  construction  substituted; 
hand  grips  and  sights  were  added  and  an  ingenious 


302      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

ball-and-socket  method  of  mounting  the  gun  in  the 
armor  of  the  tank  was  devised.  The  barrel  of  the 
Browning  tank-gun  is  fixed  in  a  solid  ball  of  steel, 
which  fits  into  a  spherical  socket  in  the  wall  of  the 
tank  in  such  a  way  that  the  gun  can  be  rotated  and 
aimed  in  any  direction,  the  only  opening  through  which 
an  enemy  bullet  or  fragment  of  shell  might  enter  being 
the  tiny  aperture  through  which  the  gunner  inside  the 
tank  aims  his  weapon.  So  mounted,  the  Browning 
machine-gun  is  as  flexible  and  easy  to  handle  as  the 
ordinary  infantry  rifle,  but  with  infinitely  greater 
killing  power  because  of  the  tremendous  velocity  of 
its  continuous  stream  of  bullets. 

While  on  the  subject  of  guns,  we  must  refer  to  two 
most  ingenious  devices  developed  for  and  by  the  navy. 
One  of  these,  the  Davis  airplane-gun,  proved  the  most 
successful  effort  yet  made  to  adapt  rifles  larger  in 
caliber  than  the  ordinary  infantry  rifle  to  airplane  use. 

The  problem  to  be  solved  was  that  of  abolishing 
the  recoil.  In  the  Browning,  Lewis,  and  Marlin 
machine-guns  the  force  of  the  recoil  after  each  shot 
is  expended  in  operating  the  mechanism  that  slips 
the  next  cartridge  into  the  chamber  and  pulls  the 
trigger.  Thus  all  the  jar  of  the  explosion — the  "kick " 
— is  neutralized  or  absorbed. 

Guns  of  larger  calibers  have  to  be  provided  with 
elaborate  and  necessarily  heavy  mechanism  for  ab- 
sorbing the  recoil,  unfitting  them  for  use  in  the  air. 
Yet  the  3o-caliber  machine-gun  was  not  powerful 
enough  or  of  sufficient  range  to  make  a  seaplane 
effective  against  a  submarine.  The  Davis  gun  solves 
the  problem  by  literally  shooting  both  ways  at  once! 

The  device  consists  of  two  barrels,  pointing  in  op- 
posite directions;  the  appearance  is  that  of  a  long- 
barreled  gun  having  an  equally  long  rearward  ex- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      303 

tension  that  goes  back  over  the  gunner's  shoulder. 
One  end  of  this  end-to-end  double-barreled  gun  is 
bored  and  rifled  for  the  standard  navy  one-pound 
shell;  the  other  end  is  smooth-bored  and  carries  a 
charge  of  fine  bird-shot  of  the  same  weight  and  with 


THE   DAVIS  GUN   THAT   SHOOTS  BOTH   WAYS 

At  the  same  time  that  a  one-pound  shell  is  discharged  toward 


rine  a  pound  of  bird -shot  goes  int 

absorbing  the  recoil 


bma- 
gunner's  shoulder, 


the  same  powder-charge  behind  it.  When  the  trigger 
is  pulled  both  cartridges  are  fired  simultaneously. 
The  recoil  in  each  direction  exactly  counterbalances 
that  in  the  other,  the  bird-shot  falls  harmlessly  to  the 
earth  or  the  sea  and  there  is  no  jar  or  strain  on  the 
structure  of  the  seaplane. 

Another    ingenious    navy    experiment    in    double- 


3o4      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

barreled  weapons  was  the  twin  gun.  This  was  two 
3 -inch  navy  rifles  mounted  parallel  on  a  single  mount. 
The  purpose  was  to  achieve  rapidity  of  fire  when  at- 
tacking a  submarine,  but  the  device  had  only  reached 
the  experimental  stage  when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

American  inventive  genius  manifested  itself  in  many 
other  types  of  arms.  We  improved  the  bayonet — a 
weapon  which  had  become  almost  obsolete  and  much 
neglected  by  military  authorities  prior  to  the  European 
War,  but  which  came  back  into  its  own  in  the  hand-to- 
hand  fighting  incident  to  the  storming  of  the  enemy's 
trenches.  We  devised  a  way  of  manufacturing  bay- 
onets by  rolling  them  out  of  steel  instead  of  hand- 
forging  them,  as  had  been  the  universal  practice. 

One  application  of  Yankee  ingenuity  to  small-arms 
evoked  a  protest  from  the  German  government,  which 
declared  that  we  were  conducting  warfare  in  an  in- 
human and  barbarous  manner  by  using  shot-guns  in 
the  trenches !  The  Germans  claimed  that  this  was  in 
violation  of  the  Geneva  Convention,  which  prohibited 
the  use  of  weapons  calculated  to  cause  unnecessary 
pain  and  suffering.  The  main  charge  was  true — we 
were  using  shot-guns.  The  efficacy  of  the  sawed-off 
shot-gun  or  "riot-gun"  had  been  demonstrated  by 
many  Western  sheriffs.  We  supplied  our  troops  with 
both  Winchester  and  Remington  repeating  shot-guns 
with  shortened  barrels,  primarily  for  the  purpose  of 
arming  the  guards  placed  over  German  prisoners,  but 
many  of  them  were  actually  used  in  the  trenches. 
Each  shell  contained  nine  buckshot  the  size  of  a  pea; 
for  close  fighting  there  is  no  firearm  so  deadly. 

How  our  manufacturers  of  arms  speeded  up  the 
production  of  the  Colt  automatic  pistol  and  the 
Smith  &  Wesson  4 5 -caliber  revolvers,  how  new  and 
ingenious  methods  were  adopted  to  speed  up  produc- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      305 

tion  of  cartridges  for  rifles  and  machine-guns,  are 
stories  rivaling  in  interest  in  their  recital  of  desperate 
efforts  against  unforeseen  odds  any  story  of  actual 
fighting  itself;  I  shall  not  stop  to  tell  them  here. 


BROWNING   AUTOMATIC   RIFLE 

This  weapon,  which  fires  twenty  shots  in  five  seconds,  weighs  fifteen  pounds  and 
can  be  handled  by  one  man 

We  had  a  new  problem  to  solve  in  manufacturing 
tracer  bullets  and  incendiary  bullets  for  aerial  warfare. 
In  loading  cartridge-belts  for  aircraft  machine-guns  a 
tracer  bullet  is  substituted  for  the  ordinary  bullet, 
made  of  lead  with  a  cupro-nickel  jacket  at  stated 
intervals.  The  tracer  bullet  gives  off  a  bright  light 
as  it  passes  through  the  air,  a  light  so  brilliant  as  to 
be  plainly  visible  in  the  brightest  sunlight.  This 
enables  the  gunner  to  know  at  all  times  whether  his 


\YIXCIIESTER    I2-CAGE    RIOT-GUN 


bullets  are  reaching  their  mark,  as  he  can  actually 
see  the  tracers,  which  may  be  every  fifth  bullet,  for 
at  least  500  yards  of  their  flight.  The  tracer  bullet, 
as  developed  in  America,  consists  of  a  cupro-nickel 
shell,  the  nose  of  which  contains  a  leaden  core  to 


306      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

balance  the  bullet  properly.  The  rear  chamber  of  the 
bullet  holds  a  cup  containing  a  mixture  of  barium 
peroxide  and  magnesium.  The  rear  of  the  bullet  is 
left  open,  so  that  the  chemical  mixture  is  ignited 
by  the  flame  of  the  powder  at  the  moment  of  discharge. 


THE  LIVENS   PROJECTOR 

One  of  the  most  carefully  guarded  war  secrets,  which  the  Germans  were  never  able  to 
solve,  was  this  electrically  fixed  device  for  sending  shells  into  the  enemy  lines. 


The  purpose  of  the  incendiary  bullet  in  aerial  war- 
fare is  to  set  fire  to  the  gas-tank  of  the  enemy  machine. 
In  the  incendiary  bullet  phosphorus  is  contained  in  a 
chamber  in  the  nose  of  the  bullet.  Behind  the 
phosphorus  is  a  block  of  lead  coming  flush  with  the 
base  of  the  bullet  and  soldered  to  it,  and  in  one  side 
of  the  bullet  is  a  hole  drilled  through  the  hard  casing 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      307 

and  filled  with  a  special  kind  of  solder.  The  heat 
caused  by  the  friction  as  the  bullet  passes  through  the 
gun-barrel  melts  the  solder  out  of  this  hole  and  fuses 
the  phosphorus  in  the  nose  of  the  bullet.  The  cen- 
trifugal force  of  the  revolving  bullet  whirls  the  phos- 


"THE  WEAPON  THAT  WON  THE  WAR" 

The  French  Soixante-quinze,  or  75-millimeter  field  gun,  was  the  most  effective 

weapon  the  Allies  had.   This  is  the  American  thiee-inch  gun,  built  on  the  French 

model  with  Yankee  improvements. 

phorus  out  through  the  hole.  The  incendiary  bullet 
gives  off  a  spiral  of  blue  smoke  as  it  passes  through 
the  air,  and  at  a  range  up  to  350  yards  such  a  bullet 
striking  the  gas-tank  of  an  observation  balloon  or  a 
Zeppelin,  or  any  inflammable  part  of  an  airplane  or 
its  gas-tank,  starts  a  conflagration. 

The  armor-piercing  bullet  is  not  a  solid  chunk  of 


3o8      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

steel;  such  a  missile  might  make  a  dent  in  thin  armor- 
plate,  but  it  would  not  penetrate  it.  As  every  one 
who  has  tried  to  drill  a  hole  in  steel  realizes,  a  lubricant 
for  the  drill  is  necessary.  In  the  case  of  the  armor- 
piercing  bullet  this  lubricant  is  melted  lead.  The 
outer  casing  of  the  armor-piercing  rifle  bullet  is  of 
cupro-nickel;  this  is  lined  with  a  thin  coating  of  lead 
somewhat  thicker  at  the  ends.  Inside  of  this  is  a 
sharp-pointed  block  or  pin  of  hard  steel.  When  the 
bullet  is  fired  against  armor  plate  the  cupro-nickel 
jacket  shatters  into  pieces,  the  lead  melts  under 
the  heat  of  the  impact  and  the  steel  block  passes 
through  the  armor,  lubricated  by  the  molten  lead! 

The  conditions  of  trench  warfare  brought  new 
problems  in  weapons  to  be  solved  by  Yankee  in- 
genuity. The  hand-grenade,  an  ancient  weapon  long 
before  discarded,  the  name  of  which  lived  only  in  the 
title  of  that  handsome  body  of  foot-soldiers,  the 
British  Grenadier  Guards,  came  back  into  use  in 
warfare  in  the  early  days  of  the  trench  fighting  in 
Europe.  At  first  the  only  grenades  used  were  of  the 
defensive  or  fragmentation  type,  consisting  of  a  con- 
tainer made  of  stout  metal  that  would  fly  into  frag- 
ments when  the  interior  charge  exploded.  Six  other 
distinct  types  of  grenades  were  developed  during  the 
war.  America's  own  contribution  was  the  offensive 
grenade  made  of  paper ! 

The  use  of  paper  for  the  manufacture  of  missiles 
of  warfare  surely  deserves  to  rank  among  the  most 
ingenious  of  all  products  of  Yankee  ingenuity  in  the 
war.  Instead  of  relying  for  its  killing  power  upon 
fragmentation,  like  a  shell,  its  deadly  effect  was  pro- 
duced by  the  flame  and  concussion  of  the  explosion 
itself.  The  fragmentation  grenade,  thrown  by  hand, 
could  be  safely  used  only  from  behind  an  embankment 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      309 

or  from  the  trenches.  When  it  exploded  its  fragments 
were  as  likely  to  fly  back  and  kill  the  man  who  had 
thrown  it  as  they  were  to  kill  the  enemy,  unless  he 
were  sheltered.  The  offensive  grenade,  made  of 
paper,  however,  while  it  was  sure  to  kill  any  man 
within  three  yards  of  the  point  where  it  exploded, 


FOUR  TYPES   OF   HAND-GRENADES 

From  left  to  right-     Fragmentation  hand-grenade;  offensive  hand-grenade  made  of 
paper;  gas  hand-grenade;  phosphorus  hand  grenade. 


could  be  used  in  open  surface  warfare  without  danger 
to  the  troops  using  it.  Before  describing  the  paper 
grenade  let  me  point  out  that  the  hand-grenade  was  a 
type  of  weapon  to  which  American  soldiers,  with  their 
practically  universal  experience  in  baseball,  were  much 
better  adapted  than  the  troops  of  any  other  country 
engaged  in  the  war. 

The  American  offensive  grenade  is  made  of  lami- 
nated paper  spirally  wound  and  waterproofed  by  being 
dipped  in  paraffin.  The  top  of  this  body  is  a  die 
casting  into  which  the  firing  mechanism  is  fastened. 
By  the  time  the  armistice  was  signed  these  grenades 

21 


3io      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

were  being  produced  at  the  rate  of  60,000  a  day,  and 
more  than  6,000,000  of  them  had  been  delivered  to  the 
government. 

The  gas  grenade,  the  phosphorus  grenade,  the  com- 
bination hand  and  rifle  grenade,  the  incendiary 
grenade,  and  the  thermit  grenade  were  the  other  de- 
velopments of  this  type  of  weapon;  all  of  these  were 
adapted  from  European  experience  in  the  earlier 
years  of  the  war,  America's  problem  with  regard  to 
them  being  mainly  that  of  obtaining  manufacturing 
facilities  and  production. 

One  of  the  most  closely  guarded  war  secrets  was 
that  of  the  Livens  projector,  a  device  for  throwing  gas- 
bombs  or  drums  into  the  enemy's  ranks.  Although 
used  in  the  latter  part  of  the  war  by  British,  French, 
and  Americans,  the  Germans  were  never  able  to  dis- 
cover the  nature  of  this  device  or  to  produce  anything 
similar  to  it.  The  secret  was  guarded  most  carefully. 
In  the  government  office  at  Washington  where  the 
designs  for  its  production  were  worked  out  and  in  the 
plants  where  it  was  made  armed  guards  were  always 
on  the  watch  for  suspicious  characters,  and  no  one 
was  permitted  to  enter  who  was  not  personally  known, 
not  merely  to  be  a  good  American  but  to  be  able  to 
keep  his  mouth  shut.  The  Livens  projector  consists 
of  a  long  steel  tube  or  barrel  planted  in  the  earth 
and  braced  against  a  pressed-steel  base-plate.  It  has 
a  range  of  about  i  ,500  yards — nearly  a  mile.  In  war- 
fare these  projectors  are  usually  fired  in  groups  of 
twenty-five  or  multiples  of  twenty-five  by  electricity, 
so  that  the  touching  of  a  button  or  the  throwing  of  a 
switch,  perhaps  several  miles  behind  the  front,  would 
send  a  rain  of  gas-shells  into  the  enemy's  ranks. 

The  use  of  the  knife  as  a  weapon  of  war  was  also  a 
revival  of  ancient  fighting  methods  forced  upon  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      311 

contending  armies  by  the  conditions  of  close  hand-to- 
hand  fighting.  Every  European  army  used  trench 
knives  of  one  type  or  another.  The  trench  knife  de- 
veloped for  the  use  of  American  soldiers  was  a  com- 
bination of  the  best  points  found  in  all  the  others. 
It  is  a  vicious-looking  little  tool.  It  has  a  flat  steel 


THE   YANKEE   TRENCH    KNIFE 

The  handle  is  of  solid  bronze,  making  it  effective  as  "brass  knuckles"  if  the  nine- 
inch  blade  is  broken  off. 


blade  nine  inches  long  and  a  cast-bronze  handle 
with  four  holes  into  which  the  user's  fingers  fit,  the 
outer  edge  being  provided  with  projections  which 
make  the  hilt  resemble  the  outlawed  fighting  device 
known  as  brass  knuckles.  At  the  butt  of  the  hand 
piece  is  a  sharp-pointed  nut,  serving  both  to  hold 
the  blade  firmly  in  the  guard  and  also  to  inflict  serious 
damage  in  case  the  blade  should  be  broken  off. 

We  cannot  dismiss  the  subject  of  weapons  without 
reference  to  the  most  important  improvement  in  field 
artillery  devised  by  Americans — the  "split  trail"  for 
the  3 -inch  or  7  5 -millimeter  gun.  This  French  weapon, 
conceded  by  all  military  men  to  be  ultimate  perfection 
in  field  artillery,  had  one  defect  which  Yankee  in- 
genuity remedied.  It  was  so  mounted  that  it  could 
not  be  elevated,  or  pointed  upward,  sufficiently  to  be 


A  TRIUMPH   OF   YANKEE   INGENUITY 

This  was  the  perfection  of  this  short-range  cannon — the  37-millimeter  gun  for 
trench  use. 


THE    MOST    IMPORTANT    YANKEE    IMPROVEMENT    ON    THE    FRENCH 
"SEVENTY-FIVE"  OR  S-INCH  FIELD-GUN  WAS  THE  "SPLIT  TRAIL,"  PER- 
MITTING ITS  ELEVATION  TO  FIRE  AT  AIRCRAFT 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      313 

used  against  low-flying  aircraft,  or  to  send  a  shell 
over  a  high  near-by  hill.  American  army  engineers 
remedied  this  by  dividing  the  "trail,"  the  part  of  the 
gun-carriage  that  rests  on  the  ground  when  the  gun 
is  in  action  and  that  is  attached  to  the  caisson  when 
in  motion,  into  two  parts,  hinged  so  they  could  be 
spread  apart.  This  made  a  V-shaped  opening  that 
permitted  the  depression  of  the  breech  and  the  ele- 
vation of  the  muzzle,  so  that  the  gun  could  be  fired 
almost  directly  upward. 

Still  another  Yankee  contribution  was  the  little 
37-millimeter  (iX-inch)  rifled  gun  or  trench  field- 
piece.  This  miniature  cannon  was  being  produced 
in  large  volume  when  hostilities  ceased.  Small  and 
light  enough  to  be  carried  easily  by  a  corporal's  guard, 
it  was  proving  a  most  effective  weapon  at  the  front. 


XVII 

CAMOUFLAGE   AND    COUNTER-CAMOUFLAGE 

/CAMOUFLAGE,  a  word  taken  from  French  theat- 
*<^  rical  slang  and  meaning  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  "make-up,"  came  to  designate  in  the  Great  War 
every  sort  of  device  for  deceiving  the  enemy  as  to  the 
true  nature  of  ships,  guns,  munition-dumps,  or  other 
objects  which  it  was  desired  to  conceal.  The  use  of 
camouflage  by  both  sides  was  general  before  the  United 
States  became  a  belligerent.  American  ingenuity, 
however,  made  one  of  the  most  important  contribu- 
tions to  the  art — it  can  hardly  be  called  a  science,  al- 
though many  of  its  scientific  principles  were  ultimately 
developed — of  camouflage.  This  Yankee  contribu- 
tion was  in  the  camouflaging  of  ships. 

One  day  in  the  spring  of  1918  a  photographer  who 
had  been  doing  some  work  for  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment was  told  to  take  his  camera  to  a  little  island 
near  the  western  end  of  Long  Island  Sound  and  photo- 
graph eight  newly  camouflaged  ships  which  would  go 
out  to  sea  by  that  route  that  afternoon.  The  navy 
authorities  wanted  a  pictorial  record  of  the  appear- 
ance of  these  craft  in  their  new  paint.  The  photog- 
rapher set  forth  in  his  motor-boat  and  took  up  his 
post  at  the  island,  a  mile  or  so  off  the  main  ship 
channel.  Late  in  the  afternoon  he  caught  his  first 
glimpse  of  one  of  the  camouflaged  ships.  He  ran 


316      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

alongside  in  his  motor-boat  and  made  a  photograph. 
Then  he  hailed  the  officer  on  the  bridge. 

"Where  are  the  others?"  he  asked. 

"Why,  they  all  went  through  ahead  of  us!"  was 
the  reply. 

Seven  ships  had  passed  this  experienced  marine 
photographer  at  a  distance  of  less  than  two  miles 
and  he  had  not  seen  one  of  them,  so  completely  had 


THE   LAST   WORD   IN   MARINE  CAMOUFLAGE 

This  freakish-looking  craft,  painted  by  the  "  dazzle  "  system,  eluded  searchlights  and 
keen-eyed  coast-artillery  men  nearby. 

their  camouflage  deceived  him.  He  had  seen  some- 
thing, but  he  had  taken  the  craft  he  saw  for  a  tow  of 
barges,  a  Sound  freighter,  or  some  of  the  innumerable 
small  motor-craft  always  present  in  the  Sound ! 

The  camouflage  method  that  fooled  the  photog- 
rapher was  the  first  result  of  the  researches  of  the 
Submarine  Defense  Association,  and  their  applica- 
tion. This  association  was  formed  in  1917,  with 
Lindon  W.  Bates,  an  American  engineer,  as  its  chair- 
man. A  group  of  American  artists,  headed  by  Will- 
iam Andrew  Mackay,  Maximilian  Toch,  Gerome 
Brush,  E.  L.  Warner,  and  Louis  Herzog,  had  been 
working  out  camouflage  methods,  basing  their  work  on 
their  experience  in  the  study  of  nature's  colors  and  in 
painting  pictures  of  natural  objects.  The  purpose  of 
the  association  was  to  systematize  and  standardize 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      317 

their  work  and  to  develop  the  best  possible  means  of 
making  our  transports  and  cargo-ships  invisible,  or 
at  least  baffling  to  the  Hun  U-boats.  Their  efforts, 
combined  with  the  effective  system  of  naval  convoy 
and  the  other  measures  taken  against  the  submarine, 
were  so  successful  that  only  one  troop  transport  was 
sunk  by  a  torpedo  and  less  than  twenty  cargo-ships 
carrying  supplies 
to  our  army 
through  the  sub- 
marine zone. 

At  first  the 
ship  -  camouflage 
problem  ap- 
peared to  be 
merely  one  of 
visibility.  When 
the  ships  of  the 
American  navy 
were  first  paint- 
ed the  color  now 
ever  y  wh  ere 
known  as  "bat- 
tleship gray,"  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish  War, 
that  was  in  a  true  sense  camouflage,  as  this  color 
provides  what  navy  men  term  low  visibility;  a  gray 
ship  is  much  less  easy  to  distinguish  at  a  distance 
than  one  painted  white  or  black.  The  experience 
of  the  British  and  French  on  land,  however,  had 
shown  that  the  breaking  up  of  any  surface  by  a 
variety  of  colors  made  it  much  less  easily  seen  than  a 
solid  surface  of  any  color.  Applied  to  ships,  it  w?,s 
found  that  the  observer  looking  through  a  periscope 
actually  could  not  see  a  ship  at  a  distance  of  three 
miles  or  more  if  it  were  painted  in  judiciously  ar- 


A  CAMOUFLAGED    SHIP 

At  a  distance  of  two  miles  no  one  coald  tell  what  sort 
of  a  craft  this  was. 


3i8      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

ranged  blotches  of  sky-blue,  white,  brown,  and  black. 
He  might  see  something,  just  as  the  photographer  did, 
but  the  white  would  look  like  foamy  wave-crests,  the 


The  ordinary  cargo  ship,  uncampu- 
flaged,  looks  like  this ;  a  mere  collection 
of  angles.  The  hull  is  plain  gray. 


The  first  step  is  to  conceal  the  angles 
and  give  an  efftc.  ol  angles  elsewhere, 
by  masses  of  dark  blue. 


Patches  of  black  destroy  more  of  the 
visible  angles  and  break  up  horizontal 
and  vertical  lines. 


v    / 


A  final  application  ol  white,  in  patches 
of  sizes  and  shapes  carefully  worked 
out,  reduces  visibility  to  a  minimum. 


SUCCESSIVE    STAGES    OF    SHIP   CAMOUFLAGING 

blue  like  patches  of  sky,  the  brown  and  reds  and  black 
might  be  seabirds  or  bits  of  wreckage  or  just  the  re- 
flection of  the  sun  on  the  water. 

There  is  evidence  that  scores  of  ships  painted  by 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      319 

the  low-visibility  system  of  camouflage  passed  within 
three  or  four  miles  of  lurking  U-boats  alert  for  their 
prey,  without  being  discovered.  But  after  some  ships 
so  camouflaged  had  been  discovered  and  sunk  by 
U-boats  that  happened  to  come  up  for  a  look  at  closer 
range,  it  became 
evident  that  low 
visibility  alone  was 
not  sufficient  pro- 
tection. Some 
way  must  be  found 
to  baffle  the  U-boat 
up  to  the  very  mo- 
ment of  firing  the 
torpedo. 

The  Submarine 
Defense  Associa- 
tion concentrated 
upon  this  problem. 
George  Eastman 
personally  became 

i  n  f  f*  -r  £>  o  +•  (^  r\      a-nrl       A  "  periscope  view  "  of  a  ship  painted  in  the  cotn- 
iniereStea     ana      bined  dazzle  and  low  visibility  system  of  camouflage 

placed  the  re- 
sources of  the  Kodak  laboratories  at  the  disposal 
of  the  association's  engineers  and  artists,  and  Lloyd 
Jones,  of  the  Kodak  organization,  invented  a  visi- 
bility meter  which,  used  in  connection  with  a 
portable  periscope,  made  it  possible  to  tell  from 
the  examination  of  a  painted  model  ship  just  what 
combination  of  colors  gave  the  most  protection  at 
a  distance  and  what  arrangements  of  stripes,  zigzags, 
and  blotches  would  make  it  most  difficult  for  the 
U-boat  commander  to  tell  the  size  of  the  ship  and 
whether  it  was  moving  east  or  west,  even  when 
seen  at  close  range. 


WHAT    THE    U-BOAT   CAPTAIN    SAW 


320      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

As  a  result  of  hundreds  of  experiments  there  was 
evolved  a  method  of  camouflage  known  as  the  "daz- 
zle" system,  the  purpose  being  to  make  it  impossible, 
even  at  close  torpedo  range,  for  an  attacking  U-boat 
to  aim  correctly  at  the  target.  Certain  arrangements 


PAINTING  THE   CAMOUFLAGE  ON  THE   MODEL   BOAT 

of  stripes,  it  was  found,  give  the  impression  that  a 
ship  is  larger  or  smaller  than  it  really  is,  or  that  it  is 
moving  in  one  direction  when  it  is  actually  moving 
the  other  way;  the  principles  of  physics  and  optics 
involved  are  too  complicated  to  explain  here,  but  they 
are  the  same  that  lie  back  of  many  popular  illusions, 
such  as  arrangements  of  diagonal  lines  in  a  design 
that  appears  to  be  curved  when  it  is  really  straight, 
or  in  patterns  of  equal  length  that  appear  different  in 
size.  Something  of  the  same  principle  that  makes  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      321 

wheel  of  an  automobile  seen  in  a  motion  picture  ap- 
pear to  turn  backward  at  times  is  also  involved. 

A  ship  protected  by  the  dazzle  system  offers  the 
most  baffling  sort  of  target  to  the  man  behind  the 
periscope.  He  is  just  as  likely  to  aim  his  torpedo 


A  GROUP  OF  CAMOUFLAGED  BOATS  READY  FOR  'SERVICE 

These  are  models  of  the  large  transports  and  ships  which  carried  our  troops  and 
supplies  to  France. 

astern  of  the  ship,  under  the  impression  that  he  is 
sending  it  to  intercept  her,  as  not.  He  may  aim  at 
the  engine-room,  or  what  he  thinks  is  the  engine- 
room,  and  merely  puncture  the  forward  hold;  more 
often  he  will  miss  the  ship  entirely,  so  confusing  are 
the  different  "dazzle"  methods  adopted.  The  dazzle 
system  is  the  reverse  of  the  low- visibility  system,  as 
its  full  effect  cannot  be  gained  without  the  greatest 
possible  visbility.  And  since  it  is,  of  course,  most 


322      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

desirable  that  the  ship  should  not  be  seen  at  all,  the 
camouflage  system  finally  adopted  and  applied  to 
all  American  ships  of  every  sort  so  long  as  the  war 
lasted  was  a  compromise  between  the  two  methods. 

America's  contributions  to  the  art  of  camouflage 
on  land  were  mainly  in  the  adoption  and  development 
of  systems  that  had  been  tried  out  and  found  most 
useful  by  the  French  and  the  British.  Every  gun, 
every  piece  of  equipment  of  any  sort  that  was  ex- 
pected to  be  used  anywhere  near  the  front,  was  camou- 
flaged in  standardized  patterns  and  colors  before  it 
left  the  factory  in  America.  Yankee  ingenuity  found 
application  in  the  devising  of  methods  of  putting  on 
the  camouflage  with  the  utmost  speed  and  efficiency. 
In  the  gun-carriage  plant  of  the  American  Car  and 
Foundry  Company,  for  instance,  I  watched  the  girls  in 
khaki  overalls  spraying  the  camouflage  on  the  finished 
caissons  and  wheels  one  afternoon.  The  paints  of  dif- 
ferent colors,  in  huge  tanks,  were  deposited  by  means 
of  a  gigantic  reproduction  of  the  air-brush,  used  by 
artists  everywhere.  A  stencil  pattern  covered  all  of 
the  caisson  except  that  which  was  to  be  painted  yel- 
low, for  example;  the  camoufleuse  wielded  a  hose  as 
big  as  that  of  a  vacuum  cleaner,  and  in  a  few  seconds 
all  the  exposed  parts  of  the  apparatus  were  covered 
with  yellow.  Then  the  blue,  brown,  and  black  were 
sprayed  on  by  the  same  means. 

But  even  though  our  contributions  to  the  camou- 
flaging of  guns  were  only  in  the  line  of  quantity  pro- 
duction, Yankee  ingenuity  did  contribute,  and  very 
importantly,  to  means  of  counteracting  the  effect  of 
the  enemy's  camouflage;  for  the  Germans  early  in  the 
war  became  themselves  extremely  adept  in  methods 
of  concealing  their  gun  emplacements  and  other  facts 
which  they  wanted  to  hide.  As  I  have  already 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      323 

pointed  out,  the  most  important  function  of  the  air- 
plane in  war  is  to  spy  out  the  enemy's  positions,  and 
particularly  to  locate  his  guns.  When  aerial  defense 
had  been  perfected  by  the  Germans  to  the  point 
where  no  airman  could  fly  low  enough  or  slow  enough 
to  see  their  gun  positions  with  the  naked  eye,  resort 


THE    BOAT    AS    SIGHTED    THROUGH    A    PERISCOPE 

The  lenses  are  adjusted  to  make  the  "vessel"  appear  two  miles  distant;  this  test 
is  made  to  make  sure  that  the  camouflage  is  perfect. 

was  had  to  photography;  eventually  the  German 
camouflage  baffled  even  the  camera  lens,  in  many 
instances.  The  problem  that  had  to  be  solved,  then, 
was  to  find  a  method  of  locating  enemy  guns  that  did 
not  depend  upon  actual  observation  of  the  gun  itself. 
This  problem  was  so  important  that  it  justified  any 
possible  expenditure  in  money  and  lives  for  its  solu- 
tion, for  the  most  important  essential  in  war  is  to 
discover  and  destroy  the  enemy's  artillery.  The  so- 
lution was  found  in  a  system  of  electric  listening  and 
sound-recording  devices  that  made  it  possible  to 
locate  a  gun  with  the  utmost  precision  by  comparing 


324      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  time  between  the  three  distinct  sounds  that 
followed  its  discharge.  This  was  done  by  placing 
microphone  receiving  stations  at  various  known  and 
recorded  points  within  the  zone  of  shell-fire,  connect- 
ing them  by  wires  with  central  recording  stations  and 
by  means  of  triangulation  finding  out  exactly  where 
the  gun  that  fired  a  given  shot  fired  it  from.  A 
system  of  sound-ranging  was  in  use  by  the  British 
and  French  before  1917.  This  method  was  based 
upon  the  fact  that  there  are  three  distinct  sounds 
heard  at  what  might  be  termed  the  "receiving  end" 
of  artillery  fire. 

The  first  sound  is  that  of  the  shell  itself  passing 
overhead,  since  the  projectile  fired  by  a  high-power 
rifled  cannon  travels  faster  than  the  speed  of  sound, 
which  is  normally  1,086  feet  a  second,  varying,  how- 
ever, with  wind  velocity  and  direction  and  the  temper- 
ature and  density  of  the  air.  The  next  sound  recorded 
is  the  "boom"  of  the  gun,  and  then  comes  the  sound 
of  the  exploding  shell.  As  each  of  these  three  sounds 
was  reported  to  the  central  station  by  different  mi- 
crophones, the  exact  location  of  each  of  which  was 
known,  the  distances  between  the  receiving  stations 
formed  a  base  line  on  a  map,  the  time  between  the 
different  reports  furnishing  a  clue  to  the  distance  of 
the  gun  and  the  velocity  of  the  shell,  and  a  compli- 
cated system  of  calculations  "placed"  the  gun  at  a 
point  on  the  map  to  which  artillery  fire  was  then 
directed.  It  was  a  crude  and  imperfect  method,  but 
by  means  of  it  sixty-three  German  guns  were  dis- 
covered in  a  single  day,  and  destroyed  aerial  photo- 
graphs of  their  positions  showed  them  so  close  on  the 
map  to  the  points  determined  by  sound-ranging  that 
a  single  pin-prick  covered  the  results  of  both  ob- 
servations ! 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      325 

Immediately  upon  the  entrance  of  America  into 
the  war  our  scientists  of  the  Bureau  of  Standards 
were  put  to  work  to  devise  an  improved,  more  ac- 
curate, less  delicate,  and  complicated  method  of  lo- 
cating enemy  guns  by  sound.  They  began  by  elimi- 
nating two  of  the 
three  sounds  used 
in  the  earlier 
me  thod,  and 
worked  out  a  plan 
that  required  only 
a  record  of  the 
sound  of  the  gun's 
discharge  and  the 
exact  fractional 
part  of  a  second 
of  time  when  it 
was  received  at 
each  of  a  number 
of  microphone 
stations.  So 
thoroughly  was  THE  AIRPLANE.DETECTOR 


A  Yankee  soldier  showing  some  French  youngsters  how 
it  warns  of  the  approach  of  a  hostile  'plane  at  night. 


this  done  that  in 
the  last  few 
months  of  the 

war,  according  to  an  official  statement  by  the  Assist- 
ant Secretary  of  War,  more  German  guns  were  located 
by  this  means  than  by  any  other.  In  one  day  a  single 
American  sound-ranging  instrument,  with  its  attached 
microphones,  spotted  117  German  gun  positions. 

The  American  sound-ranging  device  consists  of  a 
central  station  located  several  miles  behind  the  lines 
and  six  microphones  which  are  placed  at  intervals  of 
about  a  mile  along  the  front,  usually  in  a  trench. 

When  the  armistice  was  signed  the  American  forces 
22 


326      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

had  twelve  sets  of  sound-ranging  apparatus  in  opera- 
tion, covering  a  sixty-mile  front.  These  microphones 
required  for  their  construction  a  degree  of  electrical 
and  mechanical  skill  seldom  applied  to  anything 
but  laboratory  instruments.  They  had  to  be  so 
delicately  adjusted  that  they  would  pick  up  only  a 
certain  type  of  sound  and  at  the  same  time  so  rugged 
that  they  would  withstand  the  jar  and  shock  of 
continuous  bombardment. 

As  each  microphone  picked  up  the  sound  of  a  gun 
behind  the  enemy's  lines  the  impulse  was  transmitted 
to  the  central  station,  where  a  strip  of  photo-sensitive 
paper  tape  was  slowly  unwinding  behind  an  electro- 
magnetic needle.  The  impulse  from  the  microphone 
moved  the  needle,  the  path  of  which  along  the  tape 
was  marked  by  a  continuous  line,  broken  only  when 
the  impulse  was  received.  For  each  microphone  a 
separate  parallel  line  was  made  on  the  moving  tape, 
which  was  itself  calibrated  to  fifths  of  a  second,  so 
that  the  exact  time  of  the  reception  of  the  impulse 
from  each  of  the  six  microphones  was  automatically 
recorded.  To  triangulate  from  the  six  known  posi- 
tions and  so  locate  the  gun  whose  explosion  had  set  up 
each  of  the  six  impulses  was  a  very  simple  matter. 
In  the  last  month  of  the  war  the  Bureau  of  Standards 
still  further  improved  this  light  and  portable  appa- 
ratus by  substituting  for  the  photographic  tape  a  strip 
smoked  by  an  acetylene  flame;  the  needle  traced  a 
white  line  as  it  scraped  through  the  smoked  surface. 

The  application  of  the  microphone  to  the  location  of 
guns  was  a  development  of  its  earliest  use  in  the  Great 
War,  for  detecting  subterranean  mining  operations 
by  the  enemy.  For  this  purpose  it  was  first  used 
by  the  French.  Inclosed  in  a  box  and  placed  in  an 
underground  gallery  or  on  a  solid  rock,  it  gave  warn- 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      327 

ing  of  any  disturbance  of  the  earth  within  seventy- 
five  yards  or  so.  American  scientists  developed  a 
geophone  with  a  much  greater  range,  and  devised  the 
method  of  connecting  a  number  of  them  with  a  central 
station.  These  devices,  hidden  under  trash  or  earth 
in  No  Man's  Land,  not  only  recorded  any  subter- 
ranean activities  of  the  enemy,  but  at  night  picked  up 
the  vibrations  caused  by  the  footsteps  of  enemy 
raiding-parties  and  even  conversations  carried  on  in 
low  tones,  exactly  as  the  dictagraph  does. 

When  hostilities  ceased  Yankee  engineers  and 
scientists  had  developed  a  device  even  more  marvelous 
than  any  of  these — a  shell-detector  which  by  picking 
up  the  vibrations  transmitted  through  the  earth  when 
an  enemy  gun  was  fired  gave  warning  in  time  to  enable 
troops  within  range  to  get  under  cover.  This  could 
be  used  only  where  the  exact  position  and  range  of 
the  gun  were  known,  but  frequently  the  American 
forces  knew  the  exact  location  of  some  hundreds  of 
enemy  guns,  detected  by  sound-ranging;  the  practice 
was  to  wait  until  the  hour  of  attack  before  silencing 
the  guns  so  detected,  and  then  concentrating  artillery 
fire  on  all  of  them  at  once  as  the  troops  moved  for- 
ward. So  the  usefulness  of  an  instrument  that  would 
tell  when  a  shell  from  one  of  these  guns  was  coming 
toward  our  positions  is  obvious.  The  physical  fact 
that  earth  vibrations  travel  many  times  as  fast  as  air 
vibrations  is  the  basis  of  this  apparatus.  The  ex- 
periments that  had  been  concluded  just  as  the  war 
ended  showed  that  at  a  range  of  4.1  miles  this  mecha- 
nism gave  warning  of  the  approaching  shell  nineteen 
seconds  before  it  was  due  to  arrive,  thus  giving  ample 
time  for  every  one  to  get  under  cover. 

Another  application  of  the  principle  of  sound- 
ranging,  developed  by  our  army  with  the  co-operation 


328      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

of  scientists,  was  the  apparatus  developed  for  detect- 
ing and  locating  hostile  airplanes  at  night.  The 
principle  here  was  the  same  as  in  the  submarine-de- 
tector, which  I  have  described  elsewhere.  Four  great 
horns  are  mounted  on  a  standard  in  such  a  way  that 
they  can  be  turned  in  any  direction.  One  pair  is  used 
to  determine  the  particular  point  of  the  compass  from 
which  comes  the  sound  of  the  propeller  and  engine  of 
a  hostile  bombing- 'plane,  which  can  be  heard  from  one 
to  three  miles  away ;  the  other  pair  is  used  to  discover 
the  altitude  of  the  'plane,  by  fixing  the  angle  from  the 
horizon  at  which  the  sound  is  heard.  When  these  two 
directions  have  been  ascertained,  the  work  of  but  a 
second  or  two,  the  searchlights  can  pick  out  the  raider 
with  no  difficulty  and  convert  him  into  a  perfect 
target  for  anti-aircraft  guns  or  our  own  fighting- 
'planes.  In  operation  the  listener  .moves  the  horns 
horizontally,  "in  azimuth"  as  this  movement  is 
termed,  until  the  sound  received  in  his  ear-pieces 
through  the  tubes  attached  to  each  horn  is  of  exactly 
the  same  intensity  in  both  ears.  Then  the  other  horns 
are  swung  vertically  until  they  reach  an  elevation  at 
which  the  sound  in  both  ears  is  the  same.  A  simple 
scale  indicates  both  angles  and  the  instrument  is 
precise  enough  to  locate  a  'plane  within  one  degree  of 
arc. 

The  French  invented  an  improvement  on  this 
method,  using  a  device  called  a  parabloid  sound - 
reflector,  which  was  portable,  while  the  horn  device 
was  cumbersome  to  carry  about.  The  parabloid  is  a 
hemispherical  basin,  built  of  wood  curved  into  a  true 
parabola.  Just  as  a  searchlight  or  an  automobile 
headlight,  by  means  of  its  parabolic  mirror,  gathers 
the  light  rays  from  the  lamp  and  projects  them  in 
parallel  lines,  so  the  parabloid  sound-reflector  gathers 


YANKEE  INGENUITY   IN  THE  WAR      329 

sound  waves  from  a  single  direction  only  and  reflects 
them  to  a  point  in  the  focal  center  of  the  parabolic 
curve.  At  this  point  a  microphone  picks  up  the 
sound.  Since  the  only  sound  waves  thus  gathered 
are  those  that  must  come  from  a  point  lying  exactly 


THE    PARABLOID   AS   PERFECTED   BY   AMERICAN  INGENUITY 

This  device  gives  the  location  of  a  hostile  airplane  at  night.  All  sounds  are  reflected 
from  every  part  of  the  curved  surface  to  the  microphone  receiver  set  at  the  focus  of 
the  parabola;  by  turning  the  apparatus  from  side  to  side  and  up  and  down  until 
the  sound  registers  at  its  greatest  intensity  the  direction  and  angle  of  height  of  the 
approaching  'plane  are  discovered. 

in  line  with  the  axis  of  the  parabloid,  the  moment 
they  are  heard  the  azimuth  and  elevation  of  the  'plane 
making  the  sound  are  known  and  indicated.  While 
not  so  accurate  as  the  quadruple  horn  method,  this 
device  had  the  advantage  of  portability.  American 
engineers,  however,  improved  the  French  parabloid 
by  reducing  the  weight  from  3,000  to  1,300  pounds, 
reducing  the  cost  60  per  cent,  and  so  constructing  it 
that  it  could  be  set  up  in  one-sixth  the  time  required 
for  the  French  machine. 


330      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

At  first  glance  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  in- 
dustrial or  commercial  salvage  from  the  devices  and 
methods  which  I  have  just  described.  It  is  not  im- 
probable, however,  that  the  experiences  of  our  scien- 
tists and  manufacturers  in  devising  and  making  sound- 
recording  instruments  of  a  delicacy  and  durability 
never  before  achieved,  and  in  figuring  out  new  and 
ingenious  applications  of  the  principles  of  the  science 
of  acoustics,  may  be  turned  to  account  in  such  de- 
cidedly useful  and  peaceful  arts  as  bridge-building. 
Engineers  have  never  agreed  on  a  satisfactory  method 
of  measuring  the  stresses  and  strains  of  bridge  struct- 
ures, in  which  may  be  included  the  steel  skeletons 
of  tall  buildings  and  the  steel  frames  of  ships.  The 
effort  has  always  been  to  provide  a  "factor  of  safety" 
sufficient  to  take  care  of  all  wind  strains  and  possible 
overload,  which  has  doubtless  in  innumerable  in- 
stances led  to  the  use  of  much  more  material  than  was 
necessary,  with  consequent  unnecessary  expense; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  even  the  most  careful  calcu- 
lations go  astray  at  times,  as  the  disastrous  wreck  of 
the  great  Quebec  bridge  across  the  St.  Lawrence  River 
proves. 

The  armistice  had  hardly  been  signed  before  the 
technicians  of  the  Bureau  of  Standards,  whose  chief 
function  is  that  of  testing  materials  and  mechanisms 
of  all  kinds,  were  at  work  on  plans  for  the  application 
of  the  microphone  and  sound-recording  devices  to 
the  testing  of  bridges,  to  ascertain  by  the  sounds  and 
vibrations  under  varying  loads  and  different  condi- 
tions of  temperature  just  where  and  in  what  degree 
such  structures  are  affected — in  other  words,  where 
the  strains  come  and  how  great  they  are.  Out  of  this 
may  well  be  evolved  principles  that  will  govern  steel 
construction  of  the  future. 


XVIII 

DOLLAR-SAVING   DISCOVERIES   AND   DEVICES 

THE  principal  difference  between  the  operations 
of  a  government,  whether  in  war  or  in  peace, 
and  the  operations  of  a  private  business  enterprise, 
is  not  one  of  size  or  the  extent  of  the  operations  of 
either;  many  national  governments  spend  less  money 
annually,  deal  with  a  much  smaller  area  of  the  earth's 
surface,  and  affect  the  destinies  of  fewer  persons  than 
any  one  of  a  dozen  big  American  business  corpora- 
tions. The  essential  difference  is  solely  that  govern- 
ment operates,  in  theory  at  least,  to  get  things  done 
well,  efficiently,  promptly,  and  to  the  best  advantage 
of  the  greatest  number  of  people,  while  these  pur- 
poses are  only  incidental  to  the  operation  of  a  private 
business,  the  sole  test  of  which,  as  to  its  success  or 
failure,  is  whether  or  not  it  makes  money  for  its 
owners.  If  it  can  make  more  money  by  doing  things 
well,  efficiently,  promptly,  and  to  the  advantage  of 
the  greatest  number  of  people — as  many  big  corpora- 
tions, and  small  concerns  as  well,  have  found  to  be  the 
case — well  and  good ;  these  things  are  not  the  reasons 
for  which  the  business  is  conducted,  however. 

Most  of  the  criticisms  of  governmental  operations 
arise  from  the  failure  to  recognize  the  essential  dif- 
ference between  them  and  ordinary  business  opera- 
tions. Government  bureaus  are  criticized  because 
they  are  not  self-supporting,  whereas  there  is  no 


332      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

obligation  for  them  to  be  self-supporting;  heads  of 
government  bureaus,  fearing  this  sort  of  criticism  or 
failing  to  recognize  the  fallacy  of  the  premises  upon 
which  it  is  based,  try  to  make  their  bureaus  self- 
supporting  and  fail  to  do  the  things  which  they  have 
been  intrusted  with  doing  in  the  way  they  should  be 
done.  From  many  experiences  of  this  sort  has  arisen 
the  prevailing  impression  that  whatever  the  govern- 
ment does  is  done  badly  and  extravagantly  and  that 
this  inefficiency  and  extravagance  are  inherent  in 
governmental  operations.  There  are  many  thousands 
of  business  men  in  America  to-day,  however,  whose 
experiences  in  dealing  with  the  government  during 
the  war  have  given  them  a  new  impression  of  govern- 
mental methods  and  purposes,  and  who  are  applying 
in  their  private  business  principles  and  processes 
worked  out  by  scientists  under  governmental  direc- 
tion, applied  to  war  production  by  governmental 
authority,  which  no  private  enterprise  ever  before 
had  the  initiative  to  discover  or  the  vision  to  adopt 
until  they  were  forced  upon  them. 

One  subject  in  which  the  educational  value  of 
methods  devised  by  and  for  the  government  during 
the  war  can  hardly  be  overestimated  is  the  common- 
place one  of  packing  goods  for  shipment. 

For  half  a  century  or  more  America  has  been  export- 
ing locomotives  and  railway  cars  to  the  four  corners 
of  the  earth,  and  throughout  that  period  these  com- 
modities have  been  shipped  "knocked  down,"  each 
part  or  a  number  of  parts  being  packed  in  a  wooden 
packing-case.  American  engineers  built  937  miles  of 
standard-gage  track  in  France  and  laid  down  several 
times  as  many  miles  of  narrow  gage,  to  connect  the 
ports  of  St.-Nazaire,  Brest,  and  Bordeaux  with  the 
A.  E.  F.'s  supply-depots  and  all  with  the  front.  We 


I  5 
o  5 

is 
1  s 


334      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

had  to  ship  locomotives  and  cars  in  great  numbers, 
and  they  were  sent  at  first  in  the  old-fashioned  way,  a 
locomotive  in  nineteen  packages  and  a  freight-car  in 
twenty-six  different  boxes  and  bundles.  As  early  as 
October,  1917,  General  Atterbury  pointed  out  the 
economies  in  time,  money,  and  man-power  that  would 
accrue  if  locomotives  could  be  shipped  to  France  "all 
standing,"  ready  to  take  out  of  the  ship's  hold  and 
put  on  the  rails.  The  manufacturers  of  locomotives 
ridiculed  the  suggestion;  so,  too,  did  the  officials 
charged  with  the  shipment  of  freight  for  the  A.  E.  F. 
War  Department  officials,  however,  became  con- 
vinced that  the  project  was  feasible;  the  question  was 
where  to  get  ships  that  could  carry  complete  loco- 
motives. The  huge  car  ferries  that  ply  between 
Key  West  and  Havana,  and  across  the  St.  I/awrence 
at  Quebec,  might  do  it,  but  they  were  unavailable, 
and  there  was  a  question  whether  they  could  carry 
deck-loads  of  locomotives  across  the  Atlantic  in 
stormy  weather.  The  big  ore  and  grain  ships  of  the 
Great  Lakes  had  hatchways  big  enough  to  admit  a 
locomotive  to  the  hold,  but  to  get  these  vessels  to  the 
ocean  involved  tremendous  expense  and  delay;  only 
the  smaller  Lake  ships  could  by  any  means  be  made 
available  for  ocean  service.  The  most  careful  search 
for  suitable  ships  finally  turned  up  four  such  craft, 
the  Feltore,  Firmore,  Cubore,  and  Santore,  built  by  a 
steel  company  for  bringing  iron  ore  from  its  Cuban 
mines,  and  provided  with  the  huge  hatches  necessary 
for  the  use  of  modern  unloading  machines.  On  May 
1 8,  1918,  the  Feltore  sailed  for  France  with  thirty- 
three  locomotives  in  its  hold,  on  their  own  wheels, 
carefully  packed  in  with  baled  hay.  How  successful 
was  the  venture  is  told  in  General  Pershing's  cable, 
which  I  quote: 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      335 

Shipment  of  erected  locomotives  transmitted  on  the  Feltore 
very  satisfactory.  Boat  completely  discharged  of  locomotives 
and  cargo  in  13  days,  with  saving  of  fifteen  ship's  days  in  unloading 
the  33  locomotives  erected,  as  compared  with  same  number  of 
locomotives  not  erected  and  further  saving  of  14  days  of  erecting 
forces.  Observations  of  Captain  Byron,  who  came  with  these 
locomotives,  show  that  by  loading  locomotives  in  double  tiers, 
placing  cab  parts  and  tools,  now  in  separate  packages,  within  ten- 
der space  and  fire  boxes,  40  to  45  locomotives  can  be  loaded. 


UNLOADING  LOCOMOTIVES   ALL   READY   TO   RUN 

For  the  first  time,  we  shipped  Baldwin  "Moguls"  across  the  Atlantic  on  their  own 

wheels.     Note  the  huge   hatches  of  the  Firmore,  the  ship   that  took  thirty-six  of 

them  in  this  shipment. 


Five  hundred  and  thirty-three  locomotives  were 
shipped  in  this  manner.  In  addition  to  the  immense 
saving  of  time,  there  was  a  money  saving  of  $775  per 
locomotive  that  would  have  been  spent  for  "knocking 
down"  and  packing,  and  of  $800  each,  the  former  cost 
of  erecting  them  on  the  other  side. 

While  Lake  steamers  big  enough  to  admit  locomo- 
tives could  not  be  brought  to  the  seaboard,  many  of 
the  smaller  type  of  Lake  ships  were  loaded  at  Lake 
ports  and  sent  directly  through  to  France  with  car- 
goes. The  narrow-gage  railroad  tracks  used  in  the 
combat  areas  close  to  the  front-line  trenches  were 


336      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

manufactured  at  Cleveland.  They  consisted  of  steel 
rails  bolted  to  steel  cross-ties,  making  short  sections 
of  track  all  ready  to  lay  down.  These  were  loaded  on 
ships  at  the  Cleveland  piers  and  sent  through  the 
Welland  Canal  and  across  to  France.  For  many 
years  direct  freight  service  from  Lake  ports  to  Europe 
has  been  a  dream  of  shipping  men ;  its  realization  as  a 
measure  of  war  economy  brings  it  nearer  as  a  commer- 
cial possibility. 

Locomotives  were  more  economically  shipped  all 
standing  than  knocked  down ;  airplanes,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  be  boxed.  The  first  airplanes  we  shipped 
overseas  occupied  immense  areas  of  valuable  cargo 
space.  A  number  of  officers  detailed  to  work  out 
more  economical  methods  of  packing  airplanes  spent 
weeks  in  experiments,  with  the  result  that  a  standard 
package  for  knocked-down  airplanes  was  evolved, 
which  saved,  at  the  lowest  estimate,  more  than 
$13,000,000  in  tonnage  space  that  otherwise  would  not 
have  been  available  for  other  cargo. 

In  solving  this  problem  and  many  others  relating 
to  the  packing  and  shipment  of  war-supplies  the  army 
availed  itself  of  one  of  the  most  efficient  and  least 
known  of  the  government's  scientific  bureaus,  the 
Forest  Products  Laboratory  of  the  United  States 
Forest  Service.  I  have  referred  to  the  part  this  in- 
stitution played  in  the  production  of  aircraft,  through 
the  development  of  the  Tiemann  dry  kiln  and  its 
tests  of  glue  and  of  airplane  woods  and  parts.  The 
350  scientific  experts  of  the  Forest  Products  Labora- 
tory are  concerned  with  every  use  of  wood,  and  the 
study  of  packing-boxes  was  not  the  least  important 
phase  of  their  work.  When  the  need  for  the  safe 
shipment  of  millions  of  tons  of  munitions  and  supplies 
to  France  became  the  most  pressing  problem  for  the 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      337 

army  to  solve,  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  was 
called  in,  and  specifications  prepared  by  its  staff  were 
adopted  by  the  army  General  Staff  for  the  entire  War 
Department,  for  all  packing  of  shipments. 

Tackling  the  problem  with  a  background  of  thor- 
ough scientific  knowledge  of  every  kind  of  wood,  its 


UNLOADING  CRATED   AIRPLANES  IN   FRANCE 

More  than  $13,000,000  in  cargo  space  was  saved  by  packing  'planes  in  boxe 


qualities,  its  availability,  and  the  best  uses  to  which 
it  can  be  put,  the  Forest  Service  added  the  results  of  its 
tests  of  packing-boxes,  made  by  means  of  an  in- 
genious six-sided  revolving-cage,  or  "tumbler,"  which 
subjects  any  package  in  a  few  minutes  to  all  the 
bumps,  knocks,  and  strains  to  which  it  would  be  sub- 
jected in  many  thousands  of  miles  of  travel  by  rail 
and  water  and  the  most  careless  handling  by  railroad 
freight  men  and  stevedores. 


338      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

More  than  twenty  types  of  packing-boxes  were 
re-designed  for  the  army  by  the  Forest  Service.  The 
boxes  permitted  under  these  specifications  were 
cheaper,  to  begin  with;  where  the  old  army  specifi- 
cations had  called  for  clear  white  pine,  for  example, 
the  new  permitted  the  use  of  many  cheaper  woods. 
Fewer  nails  in  some  types  of  boxes,  more  nails  in 
others,  screws  for  some  classes  of  shipments  instead 
of  nails,  wire  or  metal  straps  for  others,  all  were  de- 
termined by  scientific  tests.  Not  only  were  the  re- 
designed boxes  savers  of  cargo  space,  but  the  exces- 
sively high  percentage  of  broken  packages  reaching 
France  was  immediately  reduced,  the  figures  after 
July  i,  1918,  showing  damaged  boxes  amounting  to 
only  15  per  cent,  of  the  former  proportionate  number. 

Millions  of  boxes  were  shipped  to  France  containing 
ordnance  equipment  of  different  sorts;  by  using  any 
of  thirty  different  species  of  wood  instead  of  white 
pine,  and  using  also  thinner  material,  cargo  space  of 
inestimable  value  was  saved.  Grenade  boxes  were 
redesigned  to  save  space.  A  box  originally  designed 
to  carry  30  one-pound  cans  of  saddle  soap  was 
redesigned  with  a  saving  of  43  per  cent,  of  the  space 
formerly  occupied.  The  boxes  carrying  140  pounds 
each  of  cannon  powder  were  reshaped  so  as  to  save 
14  per  cent,  of  space.  A  box  designed  to  carry  two 
Browning  automatic  rifles  with  equipment  was  re- 
designed, with  a  saving  of  28  per  cent,  both  in  cargo 
space  and  in  material.  In  the  boxes  in  which  the 
infantry  rifles  were  shipped,  ten  in  a  case,  there  was  a 
saving,  through  redesigning,  of  33  per  cent,  of  space. 
More  than  two  cubic  feet  were  saved  in  the  space 
occupied  by  each  harness  box. 

If  their  war  contracts  had  done  nothing  more  than 
to  direct  the  attention  of  manufacturers  and  business 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      339 

men  all  over  the  country  to  the  commercial  value  of 
the  scientific  researches  of  the  Forest  Products  Lab- 


TESTING   PACKING-BOXES 

By  the  use  of  this  machine  the  Forest  Service  saved  the  government  millions  in 
cargo  space  and  in  damage  to  munitions  in  transit. 

oratory  it  would  still  be  possible  to  contend  that 
something  of  real  importance  and  peace-time  useful- 
ness had  been  learned.  Many  thousands,  however, 


340      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

came  for  the  first  time  into  contact  with  another  of  the 
government's  scientific  departments,  the  Bureau  of 
Standards  of  the  Department  of  Commerce,  whose 
function  is  primarily  to  make  tests  of  materials  and 
machines.  Here,  too,  lessons  of  lasting  value  were 
learned. 

i  More  than  two  hundred  military  and  naval  prob- 
lems were  put  up  to  the  Bureau  of  Standards  for 
solution.  All  were  solved  and  almost  all  of  the 
solutions  have  definite  industrial  and  commercial 
applicability.  For  example,  we  were  woefully  short  of 
infantry  rifles  when  the  United  States  entered  the  war. 
American  manufacturers  had  taken  contracts  for  the 
manufacture  of  large  numbers  of  rifles  for  the  British 
and  Russian  governments,  and  had  installed  and 
equipped  expensive  plants  for  their  manufacture.  It 
had  taken  them  many  months  longer  than  they  had 
anticipated  to  begin  production,  and  some  of  them 
were  still  away  behind  on  their  foreign  contracts  when 
America's  demand  for  weapons  was  added  to  that 
which  they  were  already  attempting  to  supply.  One 
of  the  largest  companies,  in  fact,  had  actually  paid  to 
the  British  government  a  $5,000,000  penalty  for 
failure  to  deliver  rifles  on  the  dates  called  for  in  its 
contract. 

The  United  States  had  to  rely  on  these  same  manu- 
facturers for  the  equipment  of  its  army.  It  was  ob- 
vious that  the  manufacture  of  rifles  involved  some 
difficulty  which  was  not  easily  overcome;  when  the 
problem  was  analyzed  it  was  found  that  the  chief  delay 
was  due  to  the  absence  of  any  method  of  determining 
in  advance  the  quality  of  the  steel  of  which  the  rifle- 
barrels  were  made.  A  single  bar  the  size  of  a  rifle- 
barrel  might  be  hard  in  some  parts  and  soft  in  others ; 
this  lack  of  uniformity  caused  the  drill  used  for  boring 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      341 

out  the  hole  through  the  center  of  the  bar  to  diverge. 
The  drill  would  hit  a  hidden  hard  spot  and  be  thrown 
out  of  its  true  course,  with  complete  loss  of  all  the 
time  and  labor  spent  on  the  barrel  to  that  point. 


A  FIVE-TON  MOTOR-TRUCK  KNOCKED  DOWN  FOR  SHIPMENT  TO  FRANCE 
IN   A   SINGLE   BOX 

"Is  there  any  way,"  the  War  Department  asked  the 
Bureau  of  Standards,  "to  find  out  if  a  piece  of  steel 
is  of  uniform  texture  and  hardness  without  drilling 
into  it?" 

There  wasn't  any  way  then  available,  but  the  bureau 
found  a  way.  The  magnetic  properties  of  steel  vary 

23 


342      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

with  the  hardness  or  softness  of  the  metal.  A  device 
was  constructed,  composed  of  electric  coils,  through 
which  the  magnetized  undrilled  rifle-barrel  is  passed. 
The  exact  degree  of  magnetization  of  each  successive 
inch  of  the  rod  was  thus  determined,  and  if  it  were 
unequal  or  irregular  the  rod  was  thrown  out  and  no 
time  wasted  in  trying  to  make  it  into  a  rifle-barrel. 

Industry  had  long  been  looking  for  a  method  of 
determining  quickly  and  cheaply  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  hidden  flaws  in  steel  rails.  In  railway  prac- 
tice alone  the  process  devised  by  the  Bureau  of  Stand- 
ards is  of  immense  value,  since  flaws  in  the  rails  are 
the  cause  of  a  majority  of  all  railway  accidents.  In 
steel  construction  of  all  kinds,  the  possibility  of  de- 
tecting flaws  with  certainty  is  of  the  greatest  utility. 

One  of  the  most  important  and  ingenious  contri- 
butions to  the  art  of  war  by  the  Bureau  of  Standards 
did  not  get  an  opportunity  for  use  under  actual  war 
conditions;  it  was  one  of  the  long  list  of  Yankee  in- 
ventions and  devices  which  would  have  helped  in  the 
complete  annihilation  of  the  Hun  had  the  Germans  not 
quit  when  they  did.  This  is  an  electrical  method  of 
machine-gun  control  for  firing  "through  the  pro- 
peller" of  an  airplane.  I  have  described  in  a  previous 
chapter  the  hydraulic  device  with  which  our  military 
'planes  were  equipped,  by  which  a  fixed  machine-gun 
under  the  control  of  the  pilot  is  fired  at  intervals  corre- 
sponding with  the  propeller  revolutions,  the  bullets 
passing  between  the  blades  of  the  propeller  itself. 
The  best  of  these  devices  was  not  always  accurate; 
a  small  amount  of  wear,  unless  immediately  com- 
pensated for  by  new  adjustments,  made  the  gun  fire 
at  the  wrong  time,  and  in  numerous  instances  the 
propeller  itself  was  punctured  or  shot  away. 

Just  before  the  armistice  was  signed  the  Bureau  of 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      343 

Standards  had  perfected  a  device  which  substitutes 
electric  control  for  any  sort  of  mechanical  control. 
An  electric  magnet  on  the  side  of  the  gun  holds  the 
hammer  back,  after  the  gun  has  been  automatically 
recocked  by  the  recoil  of  the  previous  shot,  until  the 
instant  when  the  space  in  front  of  the  gun  is  clear 
of  both  propeller  blades.  The  electric  connection 
with  the  propeller  axis  is  positive;  the  circuit  actuat- 
ing the  magnet  which  holds  the  hammer  back  cannot 
be  broken  until  the  propellers  are  in  a  safe  position. 
This  electric  control,  moreover,  has  another  ad- 
vantage over  the  mechanical  methods  previously  in 
use  in  that  the  pilot  does  not  have  to  press  a  trigger 
with  his  hand  or  his  foot,  but  merely  to  touch  an 
electric  button,  which  starts  the  gun  firing;  this  but- 
ton or  any  other  means  of  making  an  electric  contact 
can  be  placed  anywhere  in  the  cockpit. 

This  made  it  possible  to  construct  a  rubber  mouth- 
piece which  the  pilot  can  hold  between  his  teeth 
and  containing  a  simple  device  for  making  and  break- 
ing the  electric  gun-control  circuit.  With  both  hands 
busy,  he  can  fire  his  machine-gun  by  merely  pressing 
his  teeth  together! 

The  largest  single  job  given  to  the  Bureau  of 
Standards  was  that  of  making  master  gages  for  the 
calibration  of  every  part  of  every  item  in  the  whole 
vast  munitions  program.  Until  1918  Sweden  had  a 
monopoly  of  high-grade  gages  for  precision  work. 
The  gages  made  under  the  direction  of  the  Bureau  of 
Standards  excel  the  best  ever  produced  abroad  in 
both  precision  and  quality  of  workmanship ;  many  of 
them  are  accurate  to  within  one-millionth  of  an  inch. 


XIX 

MEDICAL   AND    SURGICAL   ACHIEVEMENTS 

WHEN  the  history  of  the  Great  War  comes  to  be 
written  from  the  perspective  of  twenty  years 
hence  the  conscientious  historian  will  point  to  the 
marvelous  advances  in  preventive  medicine,  in  cura- 
tive medicine,  in  surgical  principles  and  technic,  in 
sanitation,  and  in  personal  hygiene  as  perhaps  the 
most  important  group  of  scientific  achievements 
brought  about  by  the  war  and  the  pressure  of  military 
necessity.  In  point  of  lasting  and  cumulative  bene- 
fits to  the  people  of  the  whole  world  the  new  knowledge 
acquired  of  means  for  the  prevention  and  cure  of 
disease  and  the  healing  of  injuries,  together  with  the 
application  on  the  largest  scale  in  history  of  the  ac- 
cumulated scientific  knowledge  of  the  whole  subject 
of  individual  and  community  health,  may  well  rank 
first,  whether  it  be  measured  in  terms  of  dollars  and 
cents  or  in  terms  of  personal  happiness,  in  its  collective 
value  to  mankind. 

Whether  the  discovery  of  new  medical  and  surgical 
measures  and  the  instruction  of  twenty  thousand  and 
more  young  physicians  in  their  use  is  of  greater  im- 
portance than  the  training  of  more  than  three  million 
young  men  in  the  care  of  their  own  bodies  and  the 
elementary  principles  of  community  sanitation  is  too 
fine  a  point  to  be  decided.  The  physicians  who  have 
served  in  the  Medical  Corps  of  the  army  and  navy 


ROENTGENOGRAPHS    OR    X-RAY    NEGATIVES    OF    INJURED    BONES 


346      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

and  the  men  who  have  been  subjected  to  their  in- 
tensive hygiene  training  have  come  back  into  civil 
life  as  missionaries  of  health;  their  experience  and 
new-found  knowledge  will  prove  the  greatest  possible 
stimulus  to  the  introduction  of  wise  measures  for  the 
general  elevation  of  the  health  of  all  the  people,  and 
will  make  for  a  higher  average  of  good  health  in  the 
coming  generation. 

Nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  progress  that 
has  been  made  in  the  science  of  preventive  medicine 
since  the  Civil  War  than  to  contrast  the  proportion 
of  deaths  from  disease  and  those  from  injuries  in 
battle  in  that  war  and  in  the  Great  War  just  ended. 
In  the  Civil  War  97,000  Northern  soldiers  were  killed 
or  died  of  wounds,  while  184,000  died  of  disease.  The 
casualty  list  of  the  War  Department  to  June  i,  1919, 
showed  that  in  the  war  44,763  American  soldiers  were 
killed  or  died  of  wounds,  and  only  19,887  died  of 
disease!  Compared  with  the  mortality  among  men 
of  the  same  average  ages  in  civil  life,  there  was  a 
slightly  larger  proportion  of  deaths  from  disease  in  the 
army.  This  was  due  entirely  to  the  transmission  of 
the  highly  communicable  diseases,  measles,  scarlet 
fever,  meningitis,  and  pneumonia.  These  took  their 
heaviest  toll  among  soldiers  from  rural  districts  who 
had  never  been  exposed  to  these  infections,  and  their 
prevalence  was  the  natural  result  of  bringing  them 
into  close  contact  with  men  from  every  section  of  the 
country.  With  the  exception  of  the  four  classes  of 
infection  named,  there  was  a  smaller  proportion  of 
deaths  from  disease  in  the  army  than  in  the  same 
number  of  men  of  the  same  age  in  civil  life. 

Typhoid,  the  scourge  of  all  former  wars,  was  almost 
totally  absent.  This  disease,  which  killed  thousands 
in  the  Spanish  War,  is  so  completely  guarded  against 


IN   AN    AMERICAN    ARMY    BASE    HOSPITAL 

Every  device  that  Yankee  ingenuity  could  devise  for  the  comfort  as  well  as  the 
rapid  recovery  of  wounded  men  was  adopted;  these  mechanical  aids  to  convales- 
cence were  a  constant  source  of  amazement  to  foreign  observers. 


348      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

that  it  now  barely  figures  in  army  health  reports.  And 
before  the  United  States  had  been  in  the  war  a  year 
there  had  been  developed  a  vaccine  or  serum  against 
pneumonia  which  holds  every  promise  of  accomplish- 
ing in  the  prevention  of  this  disease  what  the  anti- 
typhoid vaccine  has  done  in  its  field. 

It  is  to  the  researches  of  the  scientific  staff  of  the 
Rockfeller  Institute  for  Medical  Research  that  this 
new  prophylactic  is  due,  as  well  as  many  of  the  other 
remarkable  medical  and  surgical  discoveries  made 
during  the  war.  Ten  weeks  before  the  Seventy- 
seventh  Division  was  sent  overseas  from  Camp  Upton 
about  half  the  men  were  inoculated  with  this  new 
serum.  Not  a  single  case  of  pneumonia  developed 
among  the  men  so  inoculated,  while  among  those  not 
inoculated  the  prevalence  of  the  disease  was  greater 
than  before.  The  extension  of  this  method  of  pre- 
venting pneumonia  to  civilians  as  well  as  to  the  rest 
of  the  army  is  only  a  matter  of  obtaining  a  sufficient 
supply  of  serum.  Eventually  it  will  be  as  readily 
obtainable  everywhere  as  is  the  diphtheria  antitoxin. 
Serums  which  have  proved  effective  against  menin- 
gitis, dysentery,  and  gas  gangrene  were  also  de- 
veloped by  the  Rockefeller  Institute  for  the  United 
States  army. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  all  medical  dis- 
coveries due  to  the  war  is  the  identification  of  the 
"cootie,"  or  body  louse,  as  a  carrier  of  disease,  and 
the  development  of  means  of  combating  his  activities. 
To  the  "cootie"  have  been  traced  the  germs  of 
typhus  and  of  several  other  diseases.  Typhus  from 
time  immemorial  has  been  the  scourge  of  armies  the 
world  over.  It  is  indeed  known  in  some  parts  of  the 
world  as  "army  fever."  In  some  countries  it  is  called 
" prison  fever."  Wherever  there  are  people  living  in 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      349 

crowded  quarters,  with  more  or  less  physical  contact 
and  under  unclean  and  unsanitary  conditions,  typhus 
is  a  certain  menace.  It  broke  out  in  Serbia  among 
the  non-combatant  population  early  in  the  war,  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  Serbians  died  from  it.  Many 


A   FIELD   OPERATING-ROOM 


members  of  the  American  "typhus  commission"  sent 
to  Serbia  by  the  Red  Cross  also  caught  the  fever  and 
died.  At  that  time  it  was  only  suspected  that  the 
body  louse  might  be  the  principal  carrier  of  this 
"spotted  fever.."  Now  the  guilt  has  been  definitely 
placed  and  another  of  the  world's  chief  causes  of 
misery  and  death  has  come  under  the  control  of  man. 
Far  more  spectacular  than  these  and  many  other 
important  advances  in  medicine  are  the  achievements 
in  surgery  whereby  it  is  now  possible  to  bring  back 
wounded  men  from  the  very  brink  of  the  grave;  to 
heal  and  restore  to  usefulness  men  who,  similarly 
injured  in  any  previous  war,  would  inevitably  have 


350      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

perished;  to  save  limbs  that  formerly  would  have 
been  amputated;  to  patch  up  and  rebuild  maimed 
and  shattered  bodies  and  features  into  marvelous 
semblances  of  their  former  selves,  and  to  enable  the 
man  who  has  lost  arms  or  legs  to  become  a  skilful, 
competent  workman  in  spite  of  his  dismemberment. 
Surgery  cannot  yet  restore  sight  to  the  blind  nor  hear- 
ing to  those  whose  ear-drums  have  been  broken  by 
the  concussion  of  great  guns,  but  short  of  these  there 
is  hardly  a  miracle  imaginable  that  cannot  to-day  be 
performed  upon  the  unfortunate  victims  of  war. 
While  the  value  to  a  world  at  peace  of  the  prevention 
and  cure  of  disease  is  naturally  greater  than  the  value 
of  even  the  most  marvelous  possibilities  of  recon- 
structive surgery,  these  latter  are,  nevertheless,  a 
distinct  added  asset  to  the  world's  wealth,  in  view  of 
the  wide  variety  of  industrial  and  other  accidents 
which  may  call  them  into  play. 

Perhaps  America's  most  important  surgical  con- 
tribution to  the  world's  heritage  of  health  from  the 
war  is  the  discovery  of  a  new  and  more  positive  and 
powerful  antiseptic  than  was  known  before  and  of  a 
scientifically  exact  method  of  applying  it,  so  that, 
provided  the  prescribed  technic  is  properly  carried  out, 
it  cannot  fail  to  heal  even  the  most  seriously  infected 
wounds.  Much  has  been  said  about  the  Carrel- 
Dakin  method  of  treating  infected  and  other  wounds. 
How  marvelous  it  actually  is  in  the  precision  with 
which  it  achieves  its  end  is  not  generally  understood. 
It  reduces  the  most  difficult  of  all  surgical  problems 
to  the  same  mathematical  precision  with  which  the 
simplest  operation  is  performed. 

The  Carrel-Dakin  treatment  is  another  production 
of  the  Rockefeller  Institute's  research,  having  been 
devised  by  Drs.  Charles  Dakin  and  Alexis  Carrel, 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      351 

two  of  the  most  distinguished  members  of  the  insti- 
tute's staff.  To  Doctor  Dakin  belongs  the  credit  of 
discovering  a  new  antiseptic,  hypochlorite  of  sodium. 
Chlorin,  the  same  deadly  gas  that,  as  I  have  pointed 
out  in  a  previous 
chapter,  gives  the 
killing  power  to 
phosgen,  mus- 
tard gas,  and  the 
rest  of  the  deadly 
array  of  war  chem- 
icals, is  the  germ- 
killing  basis  of 
this  new  antisep- 
tic. To  combine 
it  with  other  ele- 
ments in  a  propor- 
tion that  would 
prevent  it  from 
injuring  raw 
tissues,  while  per- 
mitting it  still  to 
exercise  all  of  its 
powerful  germi- 
cidal  effect,  was 
the  problem 
Doctor  Dakin 
solved.  Doctor 
Carrel,  the  Ameri- 
canized French- 
man whose  surgical  technic  is  the  marvel  of  the 
medical  world,  the  man  who  has  performed  and  de- 
vised methods  of  performing  more  new  and  radical 
operations  than  any  other  surgeon  of  modern  times, 
worked  out  the  system  of  the  application  of  the 


PORTABLE    ELECTRO-MAGNET 

Used  in  extracting  steel  particles  from  the  eye  and  to 
aid  in  locating  them  under  the  skin. 


352      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Dakin  solution  to  the  deepest  and  most  inaccessible 
wounds,  and  reduced  his  method  to  such  an  exact 
mathematical  formula  that  any  surgeon,  once  skilled 
in  the  method,  can  operate  it  with  perfect  results. 

The  underlying  principle  of  the  Carrel-Dakin 
method  of  wound  treatment  is  that  nature  will  heal 
any  injury  if  given  a  free  chance.  First  the  wound 
must  be  cleaned  out  with  the  knife,  every  particle  of 
infected  tissue  cut  away,  no  matter  how  deep  the 
operator  has  to  go.  Then  the  Dakin  fluid  is  applied, 
by  means  of  an  irrigating  device  invented  by  Doctor 
Carrel,  which  leads  the  fluid  through  a  number  of  tiny 
hollow  rubber  "fingers"  into  every  farthest  recess  of 
the  wound.  The  exact  number  of  "fingers"  to  be 
used  and  the  exact  amount  of  fluid  to  be  applied  are 
carefully  calculated  in  advance  proportionate  to  the 
area  of  exposed  surface.  The  application  is  precisely 
timed  as  to  duration  and  frequency;  the  temperature 
of  the  wound,  taken  by  a  thermometer  inserted  under 
the  dressings,  is  the  gage  that  determines  whether  the 
instructions  have  been  followed.  Given  a  wound  of  a 
certain  depth  and  extent,  if  the  prescribed  method  be 
followed,  it  can  be  predicted  in  advance,  almost  to  an 
hour,  when  the  outer  lips  of  the  wound  can  be  closed 
and  the  patient  removed.  Nothing  so  precise,  noth- 
ing so  mathematically  exact,  has  ever  been  known  to 
surgical  science.  More  than  a  thousand  army  sur- 
geons were  given  special  two-week  courses  of  training 
in  the  Carrel-Dakin  method  at  the  Rockefeller  In- 
stitute before  being  sent  overseas ;  thousands  of  wounds 
that  under  old  methods  would  have  meant  death  or 
amputation  were  healed  with  the  least  possible  re- 
minders remaining  to  the  victims. 

Under  the  direction  of  officers  of  the  Medical  Corps 
of  the  army  remarkable  advances  have  been  made  in 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      353 

the  use  of  the  X-ray  for  the  detection  and  exact  loca- 
tion of  foreign  bodies.  Not  only  does  the  perfected 
X-ray  apparatus  show  by  photography  the  position 
of  a  bullet  or  a  piece  of  shell,  but  by  ingenious  methods 
the  exact  depth  below  the  surface  is  also  determined. 
At  the  same  time  the  Roentgen  photograph  is  being 


PORTABLE   FIELD    X-RAY    EQUIPMENT 

taken  a  powerful  electromagnet  is  brought  over  the 
patient's  body.  The  surgeon  places  his  hand  as 
nearly  as  possible  over  the  spot  beneath  which  the  piece 
of  steel  is  embedded.  When  the  current  is  turned  on 
the  "pull"  of  the  magnet  on  the  embedded  steel 
sets  up  a  vibration  which  the  surgeon's  hand  readily 
detects.  The  force  of  this  vibration  gives  the  clue 
to  the  depth  of  the  steel  below  the  surface.  To  use 
this  method  requires  training  and  experience  and  it  is 
supplemented  by  other  devices. 


354      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

Formerly  the  taking  of  an  X-ray  photograph  was  a 
matter  of  fifteen  minutes  or  more;  the  perfected  army 
apparatus  does  the  work  in  a  few  seconds.  More- 
over, there  has  been  devised  a  portable  X-ray  appa- 
ratus that  can  be  sent  up  to  the  front-line  hospitals, 
the  generator  being  mounted  in  a  motor-truck,  so 
that  wounded  men  in  the  last  months  of  the  war 
did  not  have  to  wait  until  they  could  be  sent  back 
to  the  base  hospitals  before  their  cases  could  be 
thoroughly  diagnosed  and  frequently  the  bits  of  shell 
removed. 

It  would  be  easy  to  write  many  pages  of  description 
of  surgical  innovations  devised  and  introduced  by 
Americans  in  the  war.  The  surgical  work  of  our  men 
in  the  Medical  Corps,  both  of  the  regular  army  and 
of  the  reserves,  was  the  marvel  of  the  Allies,  even  as  our 
hospitals,  their  equipment,  and  their  nurses  and  nurs- 
ing methods  far  excelled  anything  previously  seen  in 
Europe.  Among  the  most  valuable  of  these  achieve- 
ments is  the  discovery  by  Dr.  William  Townsend 
Porter,  of  the  Rockefeller  Institute,  of  the  cause  of 
the  formerly  fatal  condition  known  as  "surgical 
shock,"  and  of  a  cure  for  it  "Shock"  is  a  term  used 
by  surgeons  in  several  different  connections.  Broadly 
it  means  mental  and  physical  collapse.  ' '  Shell-shock ' ' 
is  a  nervous  condition  susceptible  of  cure.  The  form 
of  shock  arising  from  dread  of  the  knife  and  the  pain 
of  an  operation  is  purely  mental  in  its  origin  and  is 
effectually  prevented  by  the  discovery  by  Doctor 
Crile,  of  Cleveland,  of  a  way  of  blocking  off  com- 
munication through  the  nerves  between  the  seat  of 
operation  and  the  brain.  But  surgical  shock  is  a 
condition  following  severe  injuries,  amputations,  or 
compound  fractures  that  is  distinctly  physical  and 
not  at  all  mental  or  nervous  in  its  origin. 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      355 

Doctor  Porter  discovered  that  surgical  shock,  which 
is  frequently  the  cause  of  death  after  industrial  ac- 
cident as  well  as  on  the  battle-field,  is  caused  by  the 
entrance  into  the  blood-vessels  of  tiny  globules  of  fat, 
either  from  the  fatty  layers  just  below  the  skin  or 


GENERATOR  FOR  PORTABLE  X-RAY  EQUIPMENT 

from  the  marrow  of  broken  bones.  These  fat  globules 
choke  the  tiny  capillaries  and  keep  the  blood  from 
flowing  to  the  brain  and  the  extremities;  meanwhile, 
the  heart  keeps  on  pumping,  but  the  blood  collects 
in  the  large  veins  of  the  abdomen  and  the  patient 
literally  bleeds  to  death  in  his  own  veins.  After 
making  this  discovery,  Doctor  Porter  worked  out  a 
method  of  stimulating  the  action  of  the  lungs  so  as  to 
draw  the  blood  into  the  chest  cavity  and  by  thus 
forcing  the  circulation  keep  the  victim  alive  until 
the  fat  particles  could  be  absorbed.  This  is  accom- 


356      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

plished  by  forcing  the  patient  to  breathe  a  mixture 
of  air  and  carbon  dioxid,  administered  through  a 
cleverly  devised  apparatus.  It  is  simple,  portable, 
and  instantly  effective.  Another  triumph  for  Amer- 
ican surgical  science! 

Equally  valuable  as  a  permanent  contribution  to 
surgery  is  the  new  "ambrine"  anesthetic,  the  merciful 
invention  of  Dr.  Gordon  Edwards.  Sprayed  on  a 
burn  or  an  open  wound,  it  instantly  relieves  pain; 
with  its  aid  dressings  can  be  changed  and  wounds 
treated  without  the  slightest  sensation  on  the  part 
of  the  patient. 

The  French  and  Italians  have  carried  farther  than 
have  American  surgeons  the  plastic  surgery  that 
literally  gives  the  man  who  has  been  wounded  in  the 
face  a  new  set  of  features.  Some  wonderful  things 
in  this  line  have  been  done,  however,  by  Americans. 
A  new  nose  has  been  made  of  bone  from  the  patient's 
own  shin  and  flesh  and  skin  from  his  forearm ;  shattered 
jaws  have  been  replaced  by  silver  "bones,"  so  ad- 
justed that  there  is  hardly  an  outward  indication  of  an 
operation.  And  in  the  field  of  artificial  arms  and 
legs  and  their  perfect  adaptation  to  the  necessities 
of  the  dismembered  American  methods  have  super- 
seded almost  all  others.  Artificial  arms  and  hands 
with  which  the  soldier  who  has  lost  both  arms  can 
write,  handle  knife  and  fork,  lift  a  glass  of  water, 
and  perform  many  other  simple  operations  have  been 
fitted;  artificial  legs  and  feet  that  enable  their  wearer 
even  to  dance  have  been  brought  to  perfection  by  the 
staff  of  expert  surgeons  and  limb-makers  working 
at  the  Army  Medical  College  and  the  Walter  Reed 
Hospital  at  Washington.  All  of  these  inventions,  de- 
vices, and  discoveries  are  that  much  distinct  gain, 
adapted  as  they  are  to  the  needs  of  a  world  in  which 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      357 

disease  and  accident  will  still  continue  to  take  toll  of 
human  life  and  limb. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the  entire 
supply  of  surgical  instruments  on  hand  in  the  United 
States  was  adequate  for  only  a  fraction  of  the  probable 
need.  Surgical  instruments  had  been  chiefly  made  in 
Germany;  almost  every  dealer  in  surgical  instruments 
in  America  was  an  agent  or  a  branch  of  a  German 
house.  The  peace-time  supply  of  some  classes  of 
instruments  had  been  coming  from  England  for  the 
first  two  years  of  the  war  in  Europe,  but  that  source 
was  shut  off  by  England's  own  needs. 

One  of  the  most  vital  and  difficult  tasks  the  Surgeon- 
General's  office  undertook  was  the  establishment  in 
America  of  a  surgical-instrument  industry.  The 
makers  of  ordinary  needles  could  not  make  surgical 
needles.  By  adopting  six  standard  sizes  and  shapes 
and  placing  contracts  for  ten  million  needles  with  the 
big  sewing-machine  companies  the  army  was  equipped 
as  early  as  these  were  needed.  Tested  at  the  Bureau 
of  Standards,  they  were  found  to  be  superior  to  the 
best  German  needles,  and  America  is  now  independent 
of  Germany.  Manufacturers  of  knives  were  induced 
by  big  contracts  to  undertake  the  manufacture  of 
surgical  knives.  Here,  too,  the  German  product 
was  improved  upon.  For  artery  forceps  recourse  was 
had  to  the  manufacturers  of  scissors;  now  we  make 
all  we  need  in  America.  So  with  many  other  kinds 
of  surgical  appliances  and  instruments,  until  America 
in  every  respect  became  independent,  now  and  for  all 
time,  of  Germany  or  any  other  country. 

No  survey  of  the  work  of  the  Army  Medical  Corps 
would  be  complete  without  at  least  a  reference  to 
that  triumph  of  Yankee  ingenuity,  the  mental  analysis 
of  three  million  soldiers  and  their  classification  by 

24 


GROUP  EXAMINATION  ALPHA 


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Schooling:  Grades,  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8:  High  or  Prep.  School.  Year  1.  2. 3.  4:  College.  Year  I.  2.  J. 4. 

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FIRST   PAGE  OF   THE   "ALPHA"  TEST 

It  looks  like  a  game,  but  it  records  human  intelligence  unerringly  when 
properly  applied. 


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360      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

scientific  psychological  methods  that  rated  their  rela- 
tive intelligence  fairly  and  accurately  and  made  it 
possible  to  pick  out  and  place  where  they  could  render 
most  effective  service  the  men  who  were  capable  of 
leadership,  those  who  could  be  made  into  officers, 

those  best  adapted  for 
the  work  of  each  of  the 
other  arms  of  the  ser- 
vice, and  those  of  low 
mental  caliber  who 
were  fit  only  for  the 
Service  of  Supply  or 
for  work  around  the 
home  camps. 

Washington  looked 
PART  OF  THE  "BETA"  TEST         forward    to    not    less 

Illiterates  demonstrate  their  mental  power  by      than  three  more  years 
tracing  through  mazes  like  this.  Q£    ^    ^    ^    ^^ 

day  in  1917  when  the 

President  and  Congress  finally  agreed  that  the  patience 
of  the  American  people  had  been  stretched  to  the 
breaking-point.  If  we  were  to  win  the  war  in  that 
time,  we  must  find  a  quicker  way  than  the  army 
knew,  than  the  civilian  world  knew,  of  fitting  the 
square  pegs  into  the  square  holes,  and  finding  a 
round  peg  for  every  round  hole,  or  our  army  of  two 
or  three  or  five  or  ten  million  men  would  be  nothing 
but  a  mob  of  two  or  three  or  five  or  ten  million 
men.  It  would  not  be  an  army  at  all,  and  it  would 
not  win  the  war. 

We  won  the  war  in  eighteen  months — half  the  time 
that  we  expected  to  take.  And  among  all  the  con- 
tributing causes  that  enabled  us  to  train  nearly 
four  million  average  Americans  into  soldiers,  provide 
them  with  sufficiently  competent  officers,  and  send 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      361 

more  than  half  of  them  overseas,  there  is  none  that 
more  strikingly  illustrates  Yankee  resourcefulness  and 
ingenuity  in  the  application  of  science  to  practical 
every-day  affairs  than  the  methods  devised  and  ap- 
plied by  American  psychologists  for  a  determination 
of  the  mental  qualifications  and  the  special  abilities  of 
officers  and  men  alike. 

TestS        


.. 
114  tou*  It   St.. 


PART  OF  THE  "BETA"  TEST  IS  TO  TELL  WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  PICTURES 
LIKE  THESE 

"Psychology"  is  a  word  used  so  loosely  in  ordinary 
conversation  and  that  has  been  so  misused  for  purposes 
of  commercial  exploitation  by  individuals  who  have  no 
possible  claim  to  be  regarded  as  scientists  that  the 
offer  of  the  American  Psychological  Association  to 
co-operate  with  the  War  Department  and  the  army 
General  Staff  was  received  with  considerable  skepticism 
as  to  any  possible  usefulness.  So  completely  did  the 
application  of  psychological  science  justify  itself  that 
it  is  a  safe  assertion  to  say  that  no  officer  or  enlisted 
man  will  ever  again  be  taken  into  either  the  army  or 
the  navy  of  the  United  States  except  on  the  basis  of 
his  fitness  as  disclosed  by  the  methods  devised  and 


362      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

applied  in  the  Great  War,  and  that  the  rating,  classi- 
fication, and  detail  of  the  army  personnel  will  always 
in  a  larpe  measure  be  governed  by  these  or  similar 

tests  applied  to 
each  individual 
soldier.  That  as 
a  result  of  this 
complete  and  suc- 
cessful demon- 
stration of  the 
practical  utility  of 
applied  psychol- 
ogy government 
civilian  employees 
before  long  may 
be  rated  and 
classified  in  the 
same  fashion  is 
not  improbable. 

Under  the  direc- 
tion of  Dr.  Robert 
M.  Yerkes,  presi- 
dent of  the  Ameri- 
can Psychological 
Association,  who 
was  commissioned 
a  Major  in  the 
Medical  Corps, 
there  was  brought 

into  the  service  a  staff  of  trained  psychologists  who 
devised  and  applied  a  simple,  efficient  series  of  mental 
tests,  the  results  of  which  were  amazing,  even  to  the 
psychologists  themselves,  in  the  accuracy  and  speed 
with  which  the  intelligence  of  the  men  examined  by 
this  means  was  ascertained. 


TEST   FOR   RADIATOR   REPAIR-MAN 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      363 

The  practical  application  of  the  psychological  tests 
covered  a  very  wide  range  indeed.  The  highest 
intelligence  among  enlisted  men  is  required  in  the 
field  artillery, 
machine-gun  bat- 
talions, and  Signal 
Corps.  Men  of 
the  lowest  grade 
of  intelligence 
may  •  serve  ade  - 
quately  as  labor- 
ers, teamsters, 
and  other  non- 
combatant  ser- 
vice, while  men 
below  the  average 
can  perform 
duties  of  an  infan- 
tryman satisfac- 
torily. 

By  the  applica- 
tion of  the  mental 
tests  it  was  found 
possible  to  brin- 
up  the  average  ol 
particular  com- 
panies, regiments, 
and  detachments 
by  exchanging 
men  of  high  men- 
tality from  one 

regiment  for  an  equal  number  of  men  of  the  lower 
grades  from  another  regiment  in  which  the  average 
of  mental  ability  was  low.  It  obviously  was  an  im- 
mense saving  of  time  and  energy  to  be  able  to  de- 


SHEET-METAL  WORKER  DEMONSTRATING  SKILL 

ON  SIMPLE  WORK  IN  HIS  TRADE  BY  MAKING  A 

TIN    CUP 


364      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

termine  that  a  particular  soldier,  on  the  strength  of 
his  psychological  score,  was  qualified  to  be  turned 
into  a  good  artilleryman,  machine-gunner,  Signal 
Corps  man,  or  what  not;  by  preventing  the  loading 
up  of  a  competent  division  with  men  who  could 
qualify  only  for  the  service  of  supply,  the  work  of 
the  psychologists  saved  incalculable  delay  in  getting 
our  overseas  contingent  ready  to  fight. 

And  while  one  group  of  psychologists,  working 
under  the  direction  of  the  Surgeon-General's  office, 
was  classifying  the  army  personnel  as  to  the  mental 
capacity  of  its  units,  the  Personnel  Branch  of  the 
Operations  Division  of  the  General  Staff  was  under- 
taking the  task  of  determining  the  special  technical 
and  vocational  ability  of  every  one  of  the  millions 
of  men  drawn  into  the  army  through  the  medium  of  the 
selective  draft,  and  placing  each  of  them  where  he 
could  contribute  most  to  the  strength  of  the  nation's 
military  force. 

These  trade  tests  were  as  carefully  devised  and 
worked  out  by  scientifically  trainedp  sychologists  as 
were  the  mental  tests  which  I  have  already  described. 
For  example,  who  can  tell  offhand  what  a  first-class 
plumber  ought  to  know?  Half  a  dozen  plumbers 
may  have  half  a  dozen  opinions.  Their  employers 
may  regard  certain  knowledge  as  essential  which  the 
men  themselves  do  not  so  regard.  In  Newark  the 
practice  may  be  for  plumbers  to  do  certain  things 
which  are  not  done  in  Cleveland  or  in  St.  Louis;  so 
for  every  trade  and  occupation  listed  in  this  huge 
dictionary  of  occupations  exact  information  as  to  what 
sort  of  questions  should  be  asked  of  men  professing  to 
know  each  trade  was  obtained  from  employers,  from 
officials  of  labor  unions,  from  recognized  skilled 
workers  actually  at  the  trade,  in  five  different  cities, 


A   GROUP   OF   CANDIDATES   FOR   COMMISSIONS   TAKING   THE    ALPHA   TEST 


THE  "BINET"  TEST  FOR  THE  MEN  OF  LOWEST  MENTAL  CALIBER 


AUTO-DRIVER   TEST   COURSE 

The  stakes  are  knocked  down  by  the  poor  driver  and  that  counts  against  his  total 
score  in  the  test. 


RUNNING  THROUGH  AN  ARTIFICIAL   SAND-PIT  AS  PART  OF  THE  MOTOR 
CYCLE  TEST 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      367 

covering  every  part  of  the  country  in  which  the 
particular  trade  is  extensively  practised. 

From  the  consensus  of  information  thus  obtained 
there  was  devised  for  every  trade  in  the  occupational 
index  a  list  of  questions  and  their  proper  answers.  In 
many  cases  the  questions  were  supplemented  by 
pictures  of  tools,  apparatus,  or  processes.  A  man 
who  professed  to  be  a  blacksmith  was  asked  questions 
the  answers  to  which  revealed  at  once  his  familiarity, 
or  lack  of  it,  with  the  blacksmithing  art;  he  was 
shown  pictures  of  tools  used  by  blacksmiths,  and  if 
he  could  not  name  them  properly  his  claim  to  being  a 
blacksmith  vanished.  If,  however,  he  passed  this 
first  oral  test,  then  he  was  immediately  given  an  op- 
portunity with  anvil,  forge,  and  sledge  to  demon- 
strate his  manual  skill  in  applying  the  knowledge 
which  his  answers  had  indicated.  These  men  were 
classified,  not  only  as  blacksmiths,  but  as  experts, 
journeymen,  or  apprentices. 

This  system  of  trade  tests  was  under  installation  in 
all  training  and  receiving  camps  and  cantonments  at 
the  signing  of  the  armistice.  It  was  in  full  operation 
in  only  a  few  of  the  camps,  although  the  first  pre- 
liminary classification  was  complete  for  the  entire 
army  personnel.  So  there  was  at  every  camp  or 
division  headquarters  a  card  index,  one  card  for  every 
man  in  the  division  or  camp,  so  classified  by  means 
of  punch  marks  and  marginal  numbers  and  different 
colored  metal  tags  that  a  telegram  from  Washington 
to  each  division  headquarters  would  bring  back  at 
once  a  precise  census  of  the  number  of  qualified  cob- 
blers, mule-drivers,  or  what  not  available  in  the 
entire  army.  It  was  then  a  simple  matter  to  send 
the  necessary  men  from  one  camp  to  another  and 
instantly  meet  the  need  of  the  moment. 


MANY    GROWN    MEN   WERE    FOUND    WITHOUT  ENOUGH    INTELLIGENCE 
TO    PUT    THE    ARMS    AND   LEGS    ON    A    WOODEN    DOLL 


MAKING  THE   TRADE   TESTS 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      369 

As  I  have  taken  pains  to  point  out,  the  importance 
of  this  successful  demonstration  on  a  huge  scale  of 
applied  psychology  in  the  selection,  rating,  and  place- 
ment of  men  doesn't  end  with  the  ending  of  the  war. 
The  work  done  in  the  army  has  pointed  the  way  for 
the  determination  in  civil  affairs  of  the  relative  value 
of  men  in  every  walk  of  life,  from  those  requiring  the 
highest  intellectual  activity  to  those  occupations  in 
which  the  sole  requirement  is  physical  stamina.  It 
has  pointed  the  way,  too,  for  the  standardization  of 
occupational  requirements  so  that  the  employer  of 
artisans  of  any  sort  can  determine,  without  the 
ruinous  waste  of  time  and  materials  that  has  always 
been  necessary  to  pick  out  the  skilled  workman  from 
the  mass  of  incompetents,  whether  a  particular  man 
is  qualified  for  a  particular  job  without  having  to 
hire  him  first  in  order  to  find  out. 

Nobody  in  or  out  of  the  army  would  claim  that  the 
system  or  any  part  of  it  has  achieved  ultimate  per- 
fection ;  as  a  long  step  in  the  direction  of  the  solution 
of  such  economic  problems  as  can  be  solved  by  keep- 
ing the  square  pegs  out  of  the  round  holes,  the  war 
work  of  American  psychologists  is  a  distinct  and  valu- 
able contribution  to  the  peaceful  progress  of  the 
world. 


XX 

CONCLUSION 

THE  old  adage,  "Necessity  is  the  mother  of  inven- 
tion," is  literally  true.  Human  progress  in  the 
arts  and  sciences  has  from  the  beginning  of  time  been 
dictated  by  humanity's  economic  necessities.  The 
most  marvelous  invention  ever  made  is  of  no  value 
unless,  in  some  way,  it  ministers  to  a  social  need. 
But  given  the  need,  the  invention  will  surely  be  made. 

The  record  of  Yankee  ingenuity  in  the  war,  of  which 
I  have  in  this  book  touched  only  the  high  spots,  is 
a  perfect  demonstration,  on  the  largest  scale  in  all 
history,  of  this  economic  truth.  Our  needs  were  great 
and  imperative,  but  they  had  only  to  be  expressed 
to  be  filled.  Should  another  similar  crisis  occur  in 
our  national  career,  who  can  doubt  that  even  more  and 
greater  marvels  would  result  from  the  application  of 
our  traditional  resourcefulness  and  skill  in  applied 
science? 

What  was  true  in  war  is  equally  true  in  peace.  Our 
scientists  and  inventors  who  gave  the  lie  to  the  croak- 
ers who  said  "It  can't  be  done"  stand  ready  to  repeat 
the  performance  whenever  the  pressure  of  social  ne- 
cessity requires  it.  All  the  stimulus  that  is  needed  is 
the  existence  of  a  need  and  the  general  recognition 
of  its  existence. 

Invention  moves  no  faster  than  demand.  It  may 
be  and  often  is  the  case  that  the  inventor  is  the  first 


YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR      371 

to  recognize  the  need  which  his  particular  applica- 
tion is  designed  to  fill;  that  society  did  not  realize 
that  it  wanted  his  invention  until  he  had  offered  it 
to  them.  The  world  is  full  of  disappointed  inventors, 
men  and  women  who  have  fancied  a  social  need  that 
did  not  exist,  or  that  had  not  yet  become  recognized 
as  such  by  society.  The  great  inventions  that  have 
benefited  mankind  are  those  which  have  most  com- 
pletely satisfied  wide-spread  social  needs  that  existed 
at  the  time  of  their  introduction.  And,  as  I  have  said, 
no  recognized  need  ever  waits  long  for  the  means  to 
satisfy  it. 

Compared  with  the  ceaseless  struggle  between  man- 
kind and  the  forces  of  Nature,  the  Great  War  itself 
was  but  a  trifling  bit  of  by-play  in  the  stupendous 
drama  that  has  the  whole  earth  for  its  stage  and  on 
which  the  curtain  may  be  said  to  have  hardly  risen 
as  yet.  We  have  only  begun  to  find  ways  of  harnessing 
the  lightning  and  the  floods,  of  turning  to  the  use  of 
humanity  the  hidden  energies  the  keys  to  whose 
hiding-places  we  are  only  just  beginning  to  discover. 

From  a  flat  plane  of  two  dimensions  the  stage  of 
this  human  drama  has  suddenly  become  a  three- 
dimensioned  space,  within  which  man  moves  as  freely 
in  all  directions  as  the  very  air  itself.  The  imagina- 
tion hesitates  before  the  picture  of  a  conquered  sphere, 
every  square  mile  of  which  contributes  its  share  to 
the  satisfaction  of  new  and  as  yet  undreamed-of 
human  needs;  yet  the  exhibition  in  the  war  of  human 
resourcefulness  and  of  power  already  acquired  over 
the  forces  that  shall  one  day  make  this  earth  of  ours 
all  that  the  prophets  of  the  millennium  have  pictured 
compels  the  belief  that  the  pressure  of  our  common 
need  will  one  day  see  this  achieved.  Our  children's 
children  may  yet  see  to  the  conquest  of  space  added 


372      YANKEE  INGENUITY  IN  THE  WAR 

the  annihilation  of  time  and  an  approach  to  that 
fourth-dimensional  state  that  is  as  yet  but  a  figment  of 
the  mathematician's  fancy,  that  state  in  which  the 
words  of  promise  shall  be  fulfilled,  "There  is  nothing 
hidden  that  shall  not  be  revealed." 

We  who  are  alive  to-day  are  spectators  for  whom 
the  curtain  has  not  yet  fallen  on  the  first  act.  The 
actors  are  the  men  of  science  who  are  giving  them- 
selves to  the  service  of  humanity  and  the  millions  of 
young  men,  inured  to  hardship  by  war,  fired  with  the 
spirit  of  adventure,  who  are  even  now,  as  this  is 
written,  advancing  over  earth,  sea,  and  air  toward 
every  remote  and  unconquered  region  of  the  world, 
to  set  up  new  outposts  of  civilization  and  bring  their 
forests,  their  rivers,  their  mines,  and  their  fertile 
fields  into  the  service  of  mankind. 

They  come  from  every  country,  of  every  race, 
these  young  veterans  of  the  Great  War — French  and 
German,  English  and  Austrian,  American  and  Bul- 
garian, Japanese  and  Turk,  Australian  and  Russian. 
From  the  headwaters  of  the  Amazon  to  the  steppes  of 
Tartary,  in  steaming  African  jungle  and  in  the  ice- 
bound Yukon  you  shall  find  them,  side  by  side,  work- 
ing out  the  destiny  of  their  children  and  ours  in  the 
great  world-drama. 

And  in  this  war  of  man  with  nature,  as  in  the  war 
of  nations,  who  can  doubt  that  no  small  share  of  the 
victory  will  be  due  to  Yankee  ingenuity? 


THE    END 


T 


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